I can't, of course, endorse the man. Final judgment doesn't belong to me, but I also can't turn off what I observe. If what he claims about himself is true, his moral compass is nowhere near aligned with mine, and his dubious sense of right makes me fear what he would do when it got coupled with the unmitigated might of the executive branch.
I can't, of course, endorse the political ideals. His positions on all the conservative ideals I hold dear and essential to the maintenance of liberty in this great land and upon the whole earth are nowhere near solid enough in substance, grounded enough in principle, or consistent enough in his own communications to warrant my support. He flipflops, goes back on promises, and re-negotiates elements of his positions that his rhetoric the day before made the world think were already settled. And where he has been consistent, he's either misguided or flat out wrong about: protectionism hurts the entire economy more than it helps the protected industries (we've known this since the failure of mercantilism); prioritizing border security and national security is correct, but to threaten a religious test, or a blanket purge without regard to the ways in which real people, who happen to also be illegal immigrants, are integrated into broader communities are both completely wrongheaded. The best I can hope for is that he'll be true to his nature as a deal-maker, and that his acumen at staring down competitors will lend a strength to international relations and force the hand of domestic policy opponents, and that this will allow his more even-headed and right-minded GOP advisors to make conservatism "his team". He's shown that he's able to take on the media and win, so if his methods can be applied to the right directions, there's hope for the country's and liberty's future.
But my inability to positively endorse the man or his ideological underpinnings doesn't mean I'd be a hypocrite for supporting his candidacy for 3 main reasons:
1. A vote in the general election is NOT a personal endorsement, nor is it an endorsement of a given agenda. Instead, it is the only tool whereby a single BINARY choice is affected: does the Democrat win, or the Republican? If I don't vote for Trump, my use of my solitary vote is going to contribute either to the failure of a third party candidate (sorry, all, they've simply NEVER won--the history is best fleshed out here in Michael Medved's inimitable style), or will contribute, by neglect, to the success of a known progressive whose net effect on liberty is certain to be worse. Sorry, "lesser of two evils is still evil" people, but that's just faulty logic. Working to minimize the damage of an impending wreck is work in a positive direction even if the wreck still happens.
2. Katie Kieffer is spectacularly correct in her opening sentence here: you are not responsible for your candidates personal choices--or even for her or his leadership choices. The only thing you're responsible for is making the best choice with what you have. She overstates Cruz's line of voting your conscience--following her own logic, one's conscience SHOULD be what drives one to vote for Trump--but her overall point is solid: not voting for Trump is tantamount to making the perfect the enemy of the good and mistaking a pragmatic vote for a personal endorsement.
3. On the issues, even though his principles aren't 100% driven by conservative ideology, he's simply not wrong: lower taxes on individuals and businesses will help everyone; he's more likely to advance conservative judges to the Supreme Court; national security is a national imperative whereas immigration is a privilege the nation should extend according to common-sense criteria to an assimilable number; and his support for the rights and freedoms already in the constitution, rather than trying to change the constitution to favor this-or-that special interest group, seems more solid than his opponent. Although Grudem, a Christian ethicist, speculates perhaps too far on matters of abortion and religious liberty, he's simply spot on that Trump is the most ethical choice on all of Trump's own platform issues, as analyzed here.
Dislike him all you want, and critique his lack of principled conservatism all you want, he's now the candidate and the choice is no longer theoretical. The rubber is on the road, and either we support the election of the better candidate, or we promote the worse destruction that the other will effectuate.
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