Is Trump, on balance, a good choice?

Trump Republicans have objected to the idea that voting for Trump meant they agreed with all his positions. Many complained they didn’t condone, say, Trump’s sexual predation, or his clear racism.  They voted tor Trump because they felt he was a change agent, and they held their noses for his bad traits.  It’s just politics.

OK, I can see that. Almost nobody loves every position of their candidate, or if they win, their subsequent actions. I can’t pretend I loved Obama’s increased immigrant deportations, for example, or his unreasonable prosecution of leakers. But everything in politics is a balance, and on balance, I think he did a wonderful job.

But when can you say that balance is lost? At some point, does that reasonable balance argument just become an ideological rationalization, and an intellectual fig leaf? Most of the early Trump actions have been completely contrary to the Republican ideals voiced against Democrats. When does his behavior cross the line and become un-Republican?

Nobody cares about my position on the question of whether Trump goes too far.  I mean, sure, I care, but I’m a loudmouth. And more to the point, I’m not a Republican. I see the Republican support for patriotism, a limited federal government, honoring our troops and our military, a modest and honorable life, charity, and more. And then I see Trump, smirking across another stage, comfortably embedded in his self-importance as he denies what he said yesterday.  I can’t understand how that bodes well for conservative or Republican values.

I’ve heard the argument that one big part of the deal is that Trump will make strongly conservative judicial appointments, overturning Roe V. Wade.  Is that goal overriding?  (It certainly caps the objection to ‘activist’ judges, since they’re clearly holding out for exactly that, but ‘activist’ was always a lie.)  Are his possible judicial appointments alone enough to justify elevating a man this deeply flawed?

I don’t have an answer, and probably can’t.  I have no faith in the Republican Party. I think they’ve lost their way ever since they absorbed the segregationist “Southern Block” that split from the Democratic party after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  They gained the South, but I worry they lost their souls.