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Conservative radio host Steve Deace, a Ted Cruz surrogate, cited Donald Trump’s refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan’s support of his candidacy as the latest addition to his list of reasons he can’t support Trump. Steve Deace signs up for #NeverTrump

Iowa conservative radio host Steve Deace will never vote for Donald Trump.

“[A]llowing Trump to redefine what is left of conservatism, to a country sorely in need of it, has a better chance of finishing us off than Trump as president has of pleasantly shocking us all (he won’t win the general election anyway),” he wrote in an op-ed for the Conservative Review published Monday.

Deace, a Ted Cruz surrogate, cited the Republican front-runner’s most recent act — a refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan’s support of his candidacy — as the latest addition to his list of reasons he can’t support Trump.

“And spare me your sanctimonious rambling about, ‘but if he’s the nominee we have to vote for him or Hillary will win,’ Deace said. “First of all, most of the thumb-suckers saying this have sat on the sidelines during this primary process, refusing to get their hands dirty doing everything they could to stop the GOP from nominating another sure-fire progressive loser/betrayer once more.”

Meantime, Deace said, he and his wife mortgaged their assets and resources to help Cruz win Iowa. “So if you didn’t do whatever you could to help someone who actually stands for what we’re supposedly fighting for, whether that be Cruz or one of the other candidates not named Trump in the race, spare me your whining,” he said.

While Republicans have a majority in the House and Senate, Deace argued that Congress still funds President Barack Obama’s policies and most of the country leans left before concluding the “anybody but (fill in the blank Democrats)” strategy hasn’t worked out for the GOP.

“’But wait,’ some of you will say, ‘if you don’t support Trump as the nominee you’re responsible for everything Hillary says and does,’” Deace continued. “By that elementary logic that means if you’re voting for Trump then you’re responsible for everything he says and does as well.”

Deace said conservatives have to reteach his generation and the one behind it a dying culture, adding that those batches of people now see his stances as “endless wars, growing government for ‘too big to fail’ corporatists but complaining when Democrats do it for the little guy, and doing nothing substantive about persevering the family and ending the abortion holocaust, other than using these things as wedge issues to attack Democrats.”

“Now we’re talking about attaching our brand to an unrepentant serial liar and adulterer that has clearly demonstrated during his 70 years on this planet he stands for nothing but himself,” Deace said.

“And as we’ve reached the apex of this primary it’s become abundantly clear that Trump is who his detractors always said he was, and is taking advantage of every negative stereotype the left has of conservatives to excel in this race,” he added. “Everything he touches becomes corrupted and distorted.”

Deace said he still hopes Cruz can win the Republican nomination but notes he won’t condemn anyone for choosing Trump over Hillary Clinton in the general election as long as people are being honest with themselves.

“I’m simply stating why this is the option my conscience has chosen, for when this current cultural self-immolation is over something must emerge for the future untainted by it,” he said. “Because if a Trump candidacy/presidency turns out the way it looks like it will, there will be a need for a movement capable of rising from the ashes that maintains enough credibility with the culture to save it.”