Hey NeverTrumpers, You, Not Sean Hannity, Are Responsible for Trump
In blaming the rise and “prognosticated” fall of Donald Trump, conservative “mainstreamers” like Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal and Charlie Sykes radio personality in Wisconsin have taken to aiming their arrows of blame for the rise of Trump on Sean Hannity. Stephens referred to Hannity as the “dumbest” Fox News anchor and Charlie Sykes, a proud Never Trumper, proclaimed that he needs a bath after listening to a Hannity radio show.
Yet, during the primary, Sean Hannity was the one national talk show host who kept his microphone open to any candidate who chose to use it. Hannity was not one of the operatives paid over $100 million to advise a presidential candidate that he could win the Republican nomination by arguing that he planned to run against his base.
Even as late as the end of the Florida primary, Sean Hannity was not amongst the prognosticators and operatives who checked their politically moderate positions on immigration to back Cruz, instead of Kasich in Utah and Wisconsin. Likewise, Sean Hannity was not part of this confederacy of dunces who failed to recognize that even if Cruz won Utah and Wisconsin, his campaign would implode because every State after Wisconsin was in the liberal Northeast and West Coasts where Cruz’s “poison pill” immigration views would be greeted with sulphur.
Political elites like Romney, Bush, and their operatives checked principles and political smarts at the door and backed Cruz over Kasich even after Kasich won pivotal Ohio. They let Trump go on to landslide victories in the remaining liberal primary States.
The choice is binary. Do you back a candidate who sounds terrible when personally attacked and hope the system of checks and balances can keep him in check? Or do you reward with the presidency, a politician who abandoned our troops through two wars, ripped our country apart with her bait and switch policies on war, abandoned millions to refugee camps in her war misadventures while spending the last quarter century skirting culpability, checks, and balances?
