Let me see if I’ve got his straight:

There’s a man who is a pure product of the City of New York, one of the great urban cesspools of our time, a borderline third-world metropolis run as a combination nanny state and dictatorship. He is the epitome of all that is hated about that city: he is brash, loud, boastful, vulgar, insincere, and only as honest as he has to be. Furthermore, he has few of the city’s virtues. Where the typical New Yorker is hot-blooded, he is cold, where generous, he is close-handed, where magnanimous, he is vicious. You could look long and hard for a more impressive illustration as to why NYC is feared and hated, and you would find little or nothing.

He is also a product of the city’s political culture. He has spent the past forty years soul-kissing the Democratic establishment, taking advantage of a crippled, corrupt city government to line his own pockets. He has been awarded hundreds of millions in contracts while slipping back millions in “contributions” to the party coffers -- a process of “clean graft” developed into a science since the days of Tammany. Worse than that, he is closely involved with the epicenter of corruption in our time. He consults regularly with none other than the Clintons -- Hillary, in fact, attended one of his weddings. It can be said without exaggeration that he is major factor in maintaining liberal dominance over the New York metropolitan area.

He was born to the Purple Chamber, a member of the elite that has been taking form in this country over the past half-century, and is even now fastening its chains over American society as a whole. Heir to a vast fortune, he has expanded it, and claims to have an 11-figure fortune (though this is unlikely.) He virtually personifies the iron triangle of wealth, politics, and media that has been undermining this country’s institutions as long as I’ve been alive.

He is the antithesis of a gentleman. His reality program helped debase the entertainment world and the culture at large. He disdains civil debate in favor of insults and personal attacks. He is a walking rebuke to moderation, decency, and civility.

And yet we’ve been told, vehemently, repeatedly, and angrily, that this man, a product of the debased liberalism of our time, is, in 2015, the spokesman of American conservatism.

That is, he’s more representative of conservatism, more deserving of attention, than Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and Bobby Jindal, all conservative rebels, all legitimate politicians with proud records, all of whom have made dramatic and substantial contributions to conservatism in America.

Yet many people who should know better view him as our epoch’s George Washington. How could this have happened? Trump chose well and burst on scene attacking the shameful bipartisan default on maintaining our national borders. Speaking bluntly (and more than a bit carelessly), he pointed to the miscreants allowed entry, the people who come here to steal, sell drugs, and murder. Immediately, the chorus began claiming he was characterizing all Mexicans (and others from further south – who now comprise about half of the border trespassers). The patent distortion of this criticism, along with the statistical likelihood that an illegal immigrant would soon commit a horrific crime (as happened soon after on San Francisco’s Pier 16), only strengthened Trump’s appeal.

The cold, hard fact is that many -- perhaps a majority of Americans -- are convinced that their interests are not being protected, that an establishment consisting of the leaders of both parties, Wall Street plutocrats, big business, and organized interest groups (including unions representing government employees) are taking advantage of them. The decline in average incomes, accompanied by a vast increase in the number of illegal immigrants welcomed into the job market, have had a direct impact on the standard of living of most Americans. The decline of manufacturing jobs and rise in imports contribute to the sense of unease, of America in decline. And the continuous stream of defaults by President Obama on the global stage -- the red lines crossed with impunity, the murder of an American ambassador and the trumped-up (pun not necessarily intended) excuse of an obscure video with the real perps remaining at large to sit for interviews with CNN, and now the acquiescence to the mullahs of Iran getting a nuclear arsenal in ten short years, all contribute to a sense that the world is walking all over us, while our elites profit as their compradors.

That is the fertile ground being plowed by Trump. As soon as he hit the “illegals” button, the caterwauling began: Trump -- he understands, he knows, he’ll fix it

This has all happened before, in ’92 with Ross Perot, the bug-eyed billionaire with more money than brains -- the same narrative, beginning to end. Perot dived into a presidential contest where he was neither needed nor wanted, played the rogue populist to the hilt, bamboozling with childish, half thought-out slogans, and…. Well, we know what the result was with Perot. History repeats, as the man said. Perot was the tragedy. And now, ladies and gentlemen, here is your farce.  

There’s a persistent rumor that Trump cleared this campaign with Bill Clinton in a phone call last April. I don’t know the truth of it any more than anybody else. But I do know this: that Trump is tight with the Clintons (this should be enough in and of itself to sound the alarm), that Big Bill never misses a trick, and the he knows exactly how he won two elections back to back with only 49% of the vote.

You think it just happened this way, boys and girls?

What it comes down to is simply put: support for Trump is support for Hillary. Anyone speaking out for Trump is speaking out in favor of Hillary Clinton for president. That is stone truth from here on in – a truth Trump supporters cannot ignore and will need to answer for. Anybody writing about the wonders of Trump, how the Donald is the new messiah, our version of Obama who will take care of everything with no effort on our part, needs first to supply a paragraph or two as to why he wants Hillary to be president.

The unfolding tragedy here is that conservatives have the most impressive bench since the 1980s. Look at them: Walker, Jindal, Cruz, just to name the three best. Each of them has in the recent past done more for conservatism -- and this country -- than Trump could manage if he lived until the 30^th century.

Cruz is the only figure in view who has answered his party’s betrayal of its rank and file like a roaring lion, calling out no less than its Senate leader (who responded by sending an aide out to cower for him). Walker has defeated three attempts by the hard left to destroy his governorship, in the process breaking the power of the government unions, a victory for which he deserves his own private Rushmore. Jindal is one of a handful of governors who immediately and without hesitation defunded Planned Parenthood on the revelation that they were peddling infant organs.

Magnificent gestures, heroic in the classic mold, actions that promise further results -- and yet we’re supposed to turn our backs on them because the Big Combover is doing the Mexican hat dance for us. (And for anybody wants to tell me I’m a shill for the Republicans -- I’ve been a registered Independent for twenty years, ever since I heard a GOP “reform” candidate say “now it’s our turn to belly up” after he was elected.)

Don’t kid yourselves: if you support Trump, you are supporting the Democrats, you are supporting liberalism, you are supporting the elite. Deny it as vehemently as you like, make your accusations, mouth your obscenities, make your threats. But face up to the truth.

You are also, not to put too fine a point on it, supporting the Clintons. I’ll leave you with this: if, in January 2017, the oath is taken by a fat, aged, unbalanced, and power-crazed woman, you will be responsible. Not the RINOS, not the sheeple, not the illegals, not the media. You, and nobody else.