The Patriot Post® · David French — Voting for Harris to 'Save Conservatism'

David French has long considered himself a truth commentator, critiquing both the state of the church and evangelical Christians. Not too long ago, French would have called himself a staunch conservative. Maybe he still does, but that would be a delusion.

He served in the military, deploying to Iraq. He was a pro-life lawyer fighting for the rights of the unborn. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) — a conservative branch of the Presbyterian church. He is an academic and a writer. However, all of French’s views seemed to change in 2016, when he — like many Christians — had legitimate critiques of Donald Trump. He has since felt the strong and occasionally vitriolic pushback from Trump supporters.

While his initial position was centered around conscientious voting, unfortunately, he has now become the very thing he so abhorred.

In his August 11 column for The New York Times, French declares, “I’m going to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and — ironically enough — I’m doing it in part to try to save conservatism.” French then lays out several critiques of Trump, explaining how the former president has changed conservatism and why that is a very bad thing.

French first touches on the topic of abortion, saying he hates that Trump has moderated the Republican position on it. As an abolitionist on the abortion front, this writer was also disappointed. Yet it’s also understandable from a political perspective why the GOP platform was moderated. When his leftist opponents are advocating for abortion in all nine months of pregnancy — even up to the point of birth — any moderation to that madness seems reasonable. French studiously avoids talking about the Harris/Walz position on abortion, even though Harris helped prosecute undercover journalist David Deleiden for exposing Planned Parenthood workers talking about selling baby body parts.

French goes on to call Trump a liar, pointing out that he understands all politicians are liars, but Trump is an especially bad one. For the record, Harris helped lie about Joe Biden’s mental decline. She has also flip-flopped on every position she has taken for the sake of winning elections.

As The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh puts it, “Abolishing ICE, guaranteeing everyone a federal job, outlawing private health insurance, banning fracking — these are all proposals that make it basically impossible to win a national race. That’s why she has backpedaled on every single one of these proposals. She has no real values. Everything’s malleable at a moment’s notice.”

In a pot-meets-kettle moment, French says that Trumpsim has changed the church, making it a cruel place. Yet French is actively facilitating Christian division, having associated himself with “God and Country,” a documentary by atheist and leftist filmmaker Rob Reiner. Is French trying to unify Christians under Christ and the Gospel, or is he trying to shame Christian conservatives into silence by giving them a “Christian Nationalist” label if they stand firm in their beliefs?

Then there’s the question of his Bible study, dubbed “The After Party,” being funded by the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors group. These types of groups aren’t funding a Christian Bible study without an ulterior motive. Leftist foundations are using their money to infiltrate the church and push left-wing agendas. Journalist Megan Basham recently wrote an entire book on this.

Finally, French says Trump is causing the Republican Party to stray away from Reaganite conservatism. Earlier this year, our Nate Jackson deftly addressed this notion:

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the first of two elections on a platform sometimes called “The Three Legged Stool” or “The Gipper’s Stool.” Family, budgeting responsibility with lower taxes, and American strength around the world became the party’s message, and Reagan fused social, fiscal, and foreign policy conservatives into a landslide-winning coalition. Since then, there have been some shifts and nuances, and the last 40 years are definitely littered with Republican failures to live up to those planks. Donald Trump’s populist following, in some respects, constitutes a personality cult, and that often means the party stands for whatever Trump thinks about something today. But overall, the Republican Party in 2024 still largely espouses Reagan’s three planks.

How is voting for a semi-communist whose agenda is going to make her predecessor’s degradation of the U.S. look like a cakewalk going to save conservatism? The short answer is that it’s not. The UK tried this same strategy during the last election, and now, Britons are being arrested for saying things on social media that their government doesn’t like.

French’s cutting-off-his-nose-to-spite-his-face approach to the November election demonstrates the lengths he’s willing to go to keep Trump out of the White House. But if you are encouraging undecideds to vote for Harris because it’ll save conservatism, that feels more like the Democrats’ line of argument — i.e., that Trump is going to destroy democracy. Neither one ends in unity or a return to kinder, gentler times. It ends with an assassination attempt like we just saw in Pennsylvania.