Yet another very important Republican supports Hillary. I’m just loving it!
Note, people who think America is anti-Muslim, please read the part that I have highlighted in blue.
Reagan Republican: Trump is the emperor with no clothes
By Frank Lavin August 8, 2016
Frank Lavin, an official in every GOP administration since Reagan, says he'll vote for Hillary Clinton
Frank Lavin is the CEO of Export Now, a company that helps U.S. brands sell online in China. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
I had the honor of serving as Ronald Reagan's White House political director from 1987 to 1989, so I can claim some insight on U.S. politics. My central conclusion on the 2016 race: It might not be entirely clear that Hillary Clinton deserves to win the presidency,
but it is thunderingly clear that Donald Trump deserves to lose.
From this premise, I will do something that I have not done in 40 years of voting: I will vote for the Democratic nominee for president. The depressing truth of the Republican nominee is that Donald Trump talks a great game but he is the emperor who wears no clothes.
Trump falls short in terms of the character and behavior needed to perform as president. This defect is crippling and ensures he would fail in office. Trump is a bigot, a bully, and devoid of grace or magnanimity. His thin-skinned belligerence toward every challenge, rebuke, or criticism would promise the nation a series of a high-voltage quarrels. His casual dishonesty, his policy laziness, and his lack of self-awareness would mean four years of a careening pin-ball journey that would ricochet from missteps to crisis to misunderstandings to clarifications to retractions.
This decision is not an easy one. I proudly served in every Republican administration over the past 40 years: Ambassador and Undersecretary for George W. Bush, Commerce Department official for George H. W. Bush, and several White House and State Department assignments for Ronald Reagan beyond the political director role.
I have seen presidents work with difficult people and difficult issues. It requires a blend of strategic vision and tactical flexibility, combined with optimism and good humor. A president needs the thick skin to ignore criticism and the management discipline to stay fixed on goals. Trump, on the other hand, manages to pick fights that are unrelated to his goals.
The most pronounced example in this regard was his tasteless criticism of the family of deceased Army Capt. Humayun Khan. We owe that young man our gratitude for the ultimate sacrifice. And we owe his parents our respect for the dignity with which they reproached Mr. Trump for his grotesqueries.
Less poignant is a part of the Trump story that ought to have particular resonance with Republicans: his four business bankruptcies, more than a trivial matter for a party that prides itself on thrift, sound money, and prudential management.
The bankruptcies reflect a man who either lacks reasonable business judgment or reasonable business ethics. By themselves, four bankruptcies are pretty bad. But four bankruptcies and a private jet is deplorable. How can everyone lose money in the collapse of a project yet Trump flies away again and again?
In the early days of my startup, there was a moment when I could have shut the firm, declared bankruptcy, and walked away from my obligations, but I have employees, investors, clients, and customers -- all of whom rely on my commitment. I have a moral obligation to stand by people who are standing by me. No wonder so many Americans are skeptical of market economics if the system can be so easily manipulated by Trump.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one bankruptcy may be regarded as a misfortune, but four begins to look like carelessness. We can suppose that Trump has every legal right to declare bankruptcies and to walk away with millions. And voters have every legal right to vote against him for those actions.
There are many issues on which Hillary Clinton and I are not in agreement. However on the core foreign policy issues our country faces -- alliance relationships, security commitments, and international engagement -- she comes closer to Republican views than does Trump. And Donald Trump makes me cringe. I am voting for Hillary. And I vote in Ohio.
The madman is going down the drain fast, his own party men are abandoning him in droves.
Fresh batch of Republicans defect to Clinton
By
Nolan D. McCaskill 08/08/16
A former aide of President George W. Bush undercut Donald Trump’s economic address before it even began Monday, leading the latest batch of Republican defections by casting Hillary Clinton as the best candidate to grow the economy.
“Our nation faces a unique set of challenges that require steady and experienced leadership. That is why today I am personally supporting Hillary Clinton,” Lezlee Westine said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Westine, who served as the White House’s director of public liaison and deputy assistant to the president in the Bush administration, is part of the latest contingent of Republicans to cross party lines to back Clinton.
“She has the expertise and commitment to American values to grow the economy, create jobs and protect America at home and abroad,” Westine added.
Westine is joined by former Michigan Gov. William Milliken, who suggested a vote for Trump would be a choice to “embark on a path that has doomed other governments and nations throughout history.”
“I am saddened and dismayed that the Republican Party this year has nominated a candidate who has repeatedly demonstrated that he does not embrace those ideals,” Milliken said in a statement, according to the
Detroit Free Press. “Because I feel so strongly about our nation's future, I will be joining the growing list of former and present government officials in casting my vote for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.”
Former New Hampshire Sen. Gordon Humphrey said he would cast his ballot for Clinton if she were “neck and neck” with Trump in his state. But Trump, he said, is a “defective nominee” who is “deranged” and whose “psyche is sick,” and the Republican National Committee should replace him as the nominee.
“It would be the height of irresponsibility to give him the powers of the presidency. It would be an act of recklessness to give him the office of commander in chief,” he told MSNBC on Monday. “This needs to be said, and there’s a growing census in agreement that Donald Trump is mentally unfit to be president of the United States. And the RNC on that account, this week or next, should revoke the nomination and choose a candidate who is experienced, but at the same time, of mental soundness.”
More good news, what a wonderful day!
50 Republican National Security Officials Eviscerate Trump In Open Letter
Trump “would be the most reckless President in American history,” they write.
Christina Wilkie 08/08/2016
Dozens of the Republican Party’s most experienced national security officials will not vote for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, they wrote in an open letter released Monday.
“We are convinced that [Trump] would be a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being,” said the former officials, many of whom held top positions in the George W. Bush administration.
“Most fundamentally, Mr. Trump lacks the character, values, and experience to be President,” they added. “He weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world. He appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws, and U.S. institutions, including religious tolerance, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary.”
Signers include some of the best known intelligence, defense and security experts of the past two decades: Michael V. Hayden, the former director of both the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency; Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge, both of whom served as secretaries of Homeland Security during the Bush administration; Dov Zakheim, a former under secretary of defense; John D. Negroponte, a deputy secretary of state and a former director of national intelligence; Eric Edelman, a top national security adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney; and Robert Zoellick, a former deputy secretary of state, United States trade rep and president of the World Bank.
The letter, which was first reported on by The New York Times, represents yet another blow to Trump’s ongoing effort to win over top Republicans. That job that has become significantly more difficult in recent weeks, as Trump has feuded with the family of a fallen soldier and threatened repeatedly to abandon NATO.
The missive also raises questions about who might agree to serve in a hypothetical Trump administration and offer the former reality TV star advice on national security issues.
Trump has repeatedly sought to distance himself from some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration, such as the war in Iraq, which Trump claims he opposed in 2003. Even so, it’s safe to assume that Trump’s campaign would have welcomed support from top members of the national security apparatus.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the letter.
In closing, the 50 officials wrote, “We are convinced that in the Oval Office, he would be the most reckless President in American history.”
Read the entire letter below. Link
