After the last couple of weeks, Donald Trump hardly needs anyone on the outside to advise him on how to best run his campaign. The political neophyte seems to have gotten his second wind, and he’s now rapidly gaining on Hillary Clinton. To make things even sweeter, Clinton appears to have caught more than pneumonia over the past few days; she’s caught whatever illness was causing Trump to flounder after the Republican National Convention. Between her “basket of deplorables” remark and her impromptu fainting spell on Sunday, her dreams of being president are crumbling before our eyes.
Even so, today’s celebrations can easily turn into tomorrow’s regrets, especially if we get complacent. Complacency, in some ways, is exactly what allowed Trump to erase Hillary’s looming lead in the polls. While she was running around Martha’s Vineyard hobnobbing with millionaires, Trump was retooling his approach and closing the gap. We don’t want Hillary’s mistakes to become ours.
For that reason, it might be a good idea for Trump to circle back to one of this election’s most important issues: that of the Supreme Court. Trump’s conservative detractors – and there are still quite a few – hate it when his supporters bring this subject to the forefront. They know, no matter how much they mock it, that this singular issue will make it very hard for them to sit it out in November. No matter how many quasi-liberal policies Trump endorses – and his maternity leave plan sounds like something cribbed from the DNC platform – there is still the matter of the Supreme Court.
The fact is, America as a whole is not nearly as liberal as the Democratic Party or their presidential nominee. There is not a widespread call to legalize abortion, true, but nor is there much appetite for mainstreaming the procedure to the point where it’s just another facet of “women’s healthcare.” And that’s just one of many issues that could come before the Supreme Court over the next four years. Will those issues be decided by a conservative majority or a liberal majority? The next president will essentially be the one to decide.
NeverTrump conservatives claim that there’s no reason to trust that Trump will remain true to his word. Fair enough. There is, nonetheless, plenty of reason to trust Hillary Clinton when she vows to fill the Supreme Court with liberal judges who have the “right” beliefs on abortion, gun control, and campaign finance reform. That’s all the reason any conservative should need to vote for Trump.
