“If I vote in the Presidential race at all, I will write in Peyton Manning. At least he’s a winner of good character.”

It is no easy thing being the Cassandra among friends and party faithful. Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. She had the gift of prophesy, but after rejecting the advances of the god Apollo, he cursed her so that none would believe her prophesies. She warned the Trojans that Greeks were in the Trojan Horse. She foresaw the fall of Troy. A prisoner and concubine after the war of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, the king’s wife, had Cassandra murdered. Cassandra saw all this coming and no one believed her.

It is no easy thing to see what is coming and have the party ignore you, friends reject you, and others assail you. The allegations of Trump supporters, based on two advertisements that appeared on this site in February, are that I am making a mint by opposing Trump. The reality is that I’ve put my own career in talk radio at risk. Talk radio should more often than not reflect the views of the listeners. I certainly do not these days. Likewise, on television, the shows would rather a Democrat vs. Republican fight. There is not much room for a conservative opposed to Trump. I am bombarded on a daily basis on twitter by attacks and wishes that my wife die of cancer while in my email my listeners tell me they will never listen again. Local and a few regional and national talk show hosts around the country and those who failed at radio but want back in have relentlessly used me as their whipping boy with my only conclusion being that they think it can advance their career or stop mine. Advertisers of my show have been targeted for harassment with some stepping back. People have shown up on my doorstep at my home and at my office. Random strangers have berated me in public in front of my kids that I am ruining my kids’ future.

But I believe I am right and here I stand. I can do no other.

For the entire primary season I chose to suspend belief and ignore the polls, convinced that Trump was a passing fad. But he is not. He is now the party nominee. It is now his supporters who suspend belief and concoct conspiracy theories to convince themselves he can win. I felt, as a formerly elected Republican and someone who has spent a long time in party politics, that I had a duty to advise and warn. Since February I have been warning both that Trump could not beat Hillary Clinton in November and that there is no way I or many conservatives of faith could actually support him. There is no grand and elaborate conspiracy of pollsters in America. Trump has only been ahead in nine polls since January and the majority of those are Rasmussen polls, which are not worth the paper they are printed on.

The warnings have all fallen on deaf ears.

So in Cleveland now the Republican Party has its nominee. The GOP had one job this year and that was to beat Hillary Clinton. They have failed at that task. Trump will not beat Hillary Clinton and the very party leaders Trump’s supporters loathe will remain in their jobs come January helping Hillary Clinton orchestrate her inauguration. The Trump supporters have become the very Republican establishment they oppose and the very leaders of the party they hate will remain once Trump is gone. The GOP is now led by a Clinton donor and friend and party leaders bow before him pretending he is something other than what he is.

Trump supporters who routinely mock me as a sore loser who had no power to stop Trump within my party primary cling bitterly to the notion that I am somehow now powerful enough to stop his election and it will be all my fault when Hillary gets elected. Trump supporters have to believe so much that is not so in order to both convince themselves that Trump can win and convince themselves it will not be their foolishness that sees Clinton get into the White House.

So here we are.

I have done my bit to sound the alarm, raise the red flag, and point out the now near certain future of a Clinton administration. There have thus far been at least a half dozen elected Republicans who have already taken the stage in Cleveland who have privately, personally told me they agree that Trump will lose. Others, like Tom Cotton, have not told me this, but are already beginning to woo the South Carolina, Iowa, and New Hampshire delegations — already campaigning for 2020 because they too know Clinton is going to win.

Events can change things. There could be some unforeseen circumstance that gets Trump elected. The Kremlin could, I suppose, rig voting machines across the nation to help him. That story will one day come out — how Putin cheered on Trump and privately led an online team of trolls to support Trump and harass his opponents. A terrible terrorist attack or race riots could stoke enough fear to see a wholesale abandonment of Clinton. Trump’s election is not impossible, but is so improbable and would take events so terrible that even if he got elected we’d all recognize he is wholly unqualified for the times that caused his election.

I have done what I thought necessary. I will move on to other things. The GOP has decided to commit electoral suicide. Many Trump supporters think I will somehow come around to the notion of voting for Trump because they see Trump as better than Hillary Clinton.

I see them both as unqualified for office and feel no obligation to help American voters destroy the republic. If I vote in the Presidential race at all, I will write in Peyton Manning. At least he’s a winner of good character. Certainly he won’t win, but at least I’ll have voted for someone morally fit for office.

My only lingering question is whether I vote at all. At this point, as I write this, the truth is that I do not think I belong to the current Republican Party. The party I belong to believes character counts and the rule of law matters. None of the three major parties think that and I really cannot see myself voting for Republicans so cowardly that they decided to go off the cliff with Trump rather than boldly stand up to him.

I suppose instead that I will shake the dust off my feet and move on as a testimony against them all. Both here at The Resurgent and on my radio show I will cover the race as an interested observer in what the fall of the republic looks like and have a backlog of stories about Democrats to get to, having been instead diverted these many months by trying unsuccessfully to stop one Democrat from taking over the GOP.

Cheeto Jesus it is for the Republicans, Hillary Clinton it is for the Presidency, and I wash my hands of it all.