Trump supporters cannot believe that some conservatives would rather see Clinton in office than support the Republican nominee — and that they deny that their lack of support for him amounts to effective support for her, and all her prospective works. These supporters admit, many of them, that Trump has serious flaws. But their uncertainty about what he would do in any given situation translates into a certainty that he would do better than she.
They allow that Trump’s promise to appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court cannot be wholly trusted. Getting them confirmed would take a fight, and he has shown very little interest in the issues, from the protection of religious liberty to the restoration of democratic authority over abortion, that it would involve. But any Clinton nominees, they note, are guaranteed to be left-wing activists.
Anti-Trump conservatives, on the other hand, argue that a President Trump would do more profound and long-lasting damage to conservatism than a President Clinton would. Her liberal initiatives would elicit nearly uniform opposition from Republicans; his would split them. He would make the Republican party less conservative while simultaneously discrediting conservatism with large portions of the public, possibly for many years.
For many of Trump’s critics, though, these concerns are not the decisive ones. If they merely disagreed with him on trade and entitlement reform, they would still strongly favor him over Clinton. But they think his morals and personality make him not merely flawed but unfit for the presidency. He is cruel, impulsive, petty, and insecure; he admires dictators; he undermines standards against political violence and bigotry.
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