RUTHFULLY YOURS

Pauline Kael after Nixon’s landslide win in 1972:

‘I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.’”

None of us will ever cast a vote that decides a presidential race, whereas we all bear immediate social cost and risk by saying whom we’re voting for. That’s the reality of incentives. Lots of prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have good reason for not sullying their carefully cultivated brands with Donald Trump’s by saying they’ll vote for him. This is understandable. In fact, it’s a no-brainer.

Of course, how you vote and what you say about your vote can be two different things. Kennedy won the 1960 election in a landslide according to polls taken after his assassination.

So let’s say it: As long as you don’t have to pay a social price for it, a Trump presidency might not be so bad. A Trump victory would be inconceivable without his bringing a GOP Congress along. His business friends would steer him away from wild actions. Mr. Trump himself has said he has no intention of destabilizing the economy.

We might get some real reform out of a Paul Ryan-led Congress. This would be Mr. Trump’s easiest path to the victories (“we’re winning again!”) he craves, and the reason some prominent conservatives like Larry Kudlow have risked their good names by lending them to Mr. Trump.

“Making America Safe Again” was the focus of the first day of the Republican National Convention. http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/immigration-problem-stupid/

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani addressed the convention and unequivocally linked immigration to that vital goal, especially where the threat of terrorism is concerned.

Kent Terry — brother of Brian Terry, a Border Patrol agent who was killed on duty by illegal aliens — also spoke at the convention, as did two mothers and one father of children were slain by illegal aliens, saying that victims of criminal aliens needs to be addressed.

This means that there are about 10 percent as many ICE agent protecting the entire United States of America as there are cops protecting “The Big Apple.”

Early in his quest for the presidency, Donald Trump ignited a firestorm when he made the need for securing America’s borders a key issue for his candidacy, promising the build a wall to separate the United States from Mexico and getting the Mexican government to pay for that wall.

Many politicians were aghast at Trump’s candor. They had come to depend on the campaign contributions of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other organizations and deep-pocketed contributors that have been feeding at the super-lucrative trough of immigration, seeing in that massive influx of foreign workers (both illegal and legal with work visas such as the H-1B visa) a way of greatly reducing labor costs by importing a cheap labor force that would drive down wages and even supplant American workers with far more compliant foreign workers.