Conservative: "Why Brexit Persuaded Me to Vote for Hillary Clinton"

[Night Watchman]

By Kori Schake
July 01, 2016

Last Friday, people across the United Kingdom woke up shocked to learn that their nation had actually voted to leave the European Union. More than a million people now reportedly would like to change their vote from “leave” to “remain”; more than 3 million signed a petition for a second referendum. EU institutions and major corporations based in London announced they would move operations and jobs from Britain to EU countries.

My reaction was a little different: I decided to endorse Hillary Clinton for president.

It wasn’t an easy decision. As a conservative, I find Hillary Clinton stands for the opposite of a number of things I believe strongly: that our government is involved in too many areas of our lives, that its profligacy is spending our country into bankruptcy, and that it very often makes problems worse because it knows too little to keep pace with change. Clinton has a seemingly inexhaustible list of government programs to address every social concern, and no conceivable way to pay for it all.

So, I have deep misgivings about a Clinton presidency, but the anguish of British voters who cast a protest vote thinking it wouldn’t matter — that their vote wouldn’t be decisive — convinced me that something much bigger is at stake in this election. The unthinkable, I realized, was actually possible this year. In the British referendum, major polling firms had the “Remain” vote leading by as much as 8 percent. As little as five hours before results were announced, betting markets gave Remain a 96 percent chance of success. And I realized I didn’t want to wake up on November 9 to find Donald Trump elected president and wish I had done more to prevent it.

As one of the signatories of the national security experts’ “never Trump” letter, I genuinely believe the erratic statements Donald Trump has made would be disastrous if adopted as American policies. His candidacy is itself bad for our country: after watching him win primary after primary, our allies have already begun questioning the durability of long-standing American commitments.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/how-brexit-convinced-me-to-vote-for-hillary-clinton-214006#ixzz4DCdZJhsl

[REALforever]

1. not much to say, but I wish MORE would understand the REALity that you see!