Brehm: This Nikki Haley Republican will be voting — with reticence — for Donald Trump and JD Vance

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of material from 11 contributing columnists, along with other commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Around this time in 2016, on these very opinion pages, I wrote that the “Republican presidential primaries produced a nominee entirely unworthy of our noble history.” I believed that then, and I still do now. Donald Trump lacks the self-control, character and aptitude we should expect in the president of the United States.

Earlier this year, I supported Trump’s primary challengers publicly and with enthusiasm and proudly served on Nikki Haley’s Minnesota leadership committee. The Republican Party and the nation would be better off had the GOP nominated her — or any of the other the primary contenders for that matter — to lead our presidential ticket.

In 2016, my conservative convictions would not allow me to cast a ballot in the general election for Trump (I wrote in Paul Ryan). And while I had hoped not to have to cast a vote for Trump this year, the severe unease I have for the troubled trajectory the country is on will compel me to do so.

The simple truth is that if elected president, Kamala Harris will not only perpetuate the unacceptable policy status quo of the Biden-Harris administration, but she will make things worse. She has been clear she finds no error in the actions or agenda of the current divisive and ineffectual White House and has been too foggy in recent attempts to renounce her former far left-wing positions, suggesting that her political past may very well be her presidential prologue. So, it seems a President Harris would govern no more aptly than the current one, but with an even more aggressive progressive bent. America just cannot afford four years of that.

That starts with the crisis at America’s porous southern border. Thanks to the lax immigration policies of Harris’ boss, more than 10 million migrants have illegally crossed into the U.S. since Trump left office — a number higher than the individual populations of all but 10 states. The U.S. is a wonderful and generous country — the greatest in the world — and we do and should continue to welcome legal immigrants into our country and communities with open arms. While Trump’s demeaning rhetoric about migrants has been disgraceful, we cannot afford to provide for millions of unverified people pouring over our border year after year, nor should we have to accept the danger that brings. This lawless approach under which Mexican drug cartels flourish and Americans suffer (fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death for 18- to 45-year-olds) poses a clear and present danger and existential threat to the sovereignty of the U.S. and must be stopped with immediacy. The Biden-Harris administration has not been able to do that. A Harris-Walz one would not either. I do think Trump will.

Another troubling predictor of how a President Harris would lead is her selection of Minnesota’s own Tim Walz as her running mate. Instead of going with a sensible and moderate second in command such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, the vice president was drawn to one of the most liberal governors in the country, sending a strong signal on how portside her White House will tack ideologically. The Walz record here in Minnesota is financially reckless, extreme and unimpressive: historic increases in government spending, even more taxation in spite of colossal budget surpluses, rampant waste and fraud at his state agencies, swelling crime rates and dipping student test scores, provisions for driver’s licenses and health care and college benefits for illegal immigrants and the promotion of radical cultural initiatives such as eliminating the bipartisan and sensible restrictions Minnesota once had on its books regarding late-term abortions and requiring that anti-capitalist, anti-American identity politics-based ethnic studies be taught in every public-school classroom. And although Walz promised to bring Minnesota together, he flat out refuses to work with Republicans on anything. The fact that all this impressed Harris is a prognostication of how profoundly progressive and partisan she would be as president.

Some argue Trump can be too incendiary in his rhetoric. They are right. His appalling response to the outcome of the 2020 election was contemptible. And, in my view, it should have compelled his permanent political retirement then. Trump’s corrosion of norms of presidential behavior and his affinity for chaos, name calling and despots has not served the country well. If elected again, Congress and the courts and leaders within his own party will need to hold him accountable, and citizens should demand more decorum from a second Trump term.

Harris, on the other hand, poses a more subtle but more substantive threat to the constitutional order that has so effectively protected our freedoms since the American founding. Over the years, she has openly flirted with expanding the Supreme Court to pack it with more progressive justices, abolishing the Senate filibuster and eliminating the Electoral College. She has little respect for the limits of federal power, which is why she thinks she can tax unrealized gains, unilaterally forgive college debt and empower D.C. bureaucrats to restrict grocery store prices they deem too high — none of which I believe the Constitution allows the federal government to do.

While Trump’s defects of temperament are substantial, if his second term is anything like his first, I do have confidence that he would promote the kind of pro-growth policies the tepid American economy needs, bring greater stability to a destabilized international order, better protect religious liberty and cut back on the insidious wokeness that is dividing us as a people. And I am hopeful that the competent JD Vance would be a steadying force as Trump’s deputy during a final four years in office.

This election is in many ways a choice between Scylla and Charybdis. I hope future presidential contests are more inspirational than this one. Overly apathetic Americans must re-engage in the political process so more appealing contenders on both sides can emerge. Our country needs to do better than this.

And so do Republicans. This race would not even be close with someone else topping this ticket. And we can thank coarse and crude Trumpism that turned voters off here in 2022 in part for the disastrous DFL trifecta that now runs this beleaguered state.

But life does often demand undesirable decisionmaking of us. Had Democrats this year nominated a moderate unity candidate, I would have given her or him consideration given Trump’s well-known shortcomings. But Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz are just too fundamentally extreme to let lead our center-right nation. And so, I believe these times and circumstances justify a vote for their opponents.