A reader asks for my take on the election

He writes:

I trust your judgment on this whole crazy presidential race this year.  I do not like or trust either candidate so it really boils down to the fact that the next president will be nominating a minimum of two and as many as four justices that will shape the court for the next 30 years.  We know who Hillary would nominate and Trump has given a list of very strong constructionists whom he would choose. So, what is a good Catholic to do?  The court has let us down many times and Hillary promises only progressive nominees.  I’m sure you have addressed this before, but I may have missed your post.  Thoughts?

Trump’s view of abortion is identical to Hillary’s.  He has made clear for years that he supports abortion and his “conversion” is a phony as a three dollar bill.  He has also made clear he supports Planned Parenthood.  A month after saying that, he took *five* different positions on abortion in three days, depending on which audience he was trying to woo and finally concluded that “the laws are set” and needed to stay that that way.  He also refused to answer the question of whether he has ever paid for abortions for  his sexual conquests.  Indeed, so deep is his commitment to the prolife cause that he became the first GOP candidate in three decades to refuse to so much as mention abortion in his convention speech.

As to his list of judges drawn up by a flunky as a sop to social conservatives, all you need to know is that he was so unfamiliar with the people on that list that he did not know one of his picks had been mocking him on social media.

In short, do not trust for one second that Trump cared about that list as anything other than a lie to silence conservative critics and sucker prolifers into thinking he cares about them.  He does not.  And any SCOTUS pick will not involve an interest in overturning Roe in the slightest.  What it *will* involve will be Trump’s core values: his desire for reckless personal power and a court that will put no check on it.  This is, recall, a man who wants to burn the first amendment for both Muslims and the press, not to mention “bomb the shit out of” an enemy embedded among defenseless civilians he believes he understands better than all the generals in the Pentagon.  A man who has repeatedly expressed his fascination with and ignorance of the use of nuclear weapons, who calls for the cold-blooded murder of civilians, and who presses the delusional belief that the ruthless deportation of unspecified millions of people completely integrated with our economy and war with Mexico to force them to build a wall are in some kind of contact with reality.  It is this quest for lawless fascist power, not to defend the unborn, that will dominate his approach to the court.  His interest in “strict constructionism” is non-existent.  He doesn’t even know what the Constitution says.

So the whole “What about the Court?” thing is, I think, a complete wash and illustrates the core failure of the prolife movement only strategy: the total and sole focus on the fantasy that either party has any interest in overturning Roe.  They don’t.  And the reason they don’t is very simple: 80%  of the American people don’t want to overturn Roe either.  It would be political suicide for the GOP to defeat Roe, so what they do instead is lie to prolife people that, any day now, they will act to outlaw abortion, all while talking prolifers into supporting all the stuff they *actually* want to do.  Result: millions of prolifers who are now spending huge portions of their time and energy defending, not the unborn, but Donald Trump’s racism, misogyny, mockery of Gold Star families, religious bigotry, and crazy Wall promises.  Case in point: celebrity Catholic convert Laura Ingraham labeling Mitt Romney a “liberal” for speaking critically of the KKK.  Why?  Because Donald Trump had avoided disavowing the KKK and Romney had called him on it.

That is how things work in the alliance between the prolife movement and Trumpian “conservatism”.  He gives the prolife movement lies and empty promises and, in return, they give him filth like defenses of the KKK or whatever other things he demands.  They dance to his tune, not he to theirs.  And it will be that way forever should (God forbid) he win.

So I think what we have to do, as Catholics, is stop giving allegiance to parties and start listening first and foremost to the Church’s teaching.  When a politician, left or right, agrees with the Church, support that.  When a politician, left or right, opposes the Church, reject that.  But put the Church first and stop worrying about whether an idea is labeled “liberal” or “conservative” by our countrymen. Ask only if an idea is compatible with the Faith. I talk about that more here.  What we need to do is pursue a consistent ethic of life regardless of how it comports with the stunted and distorted platforms of either party.

Hope this helps!