I will not vote for Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. If he wins the nomination I will not vote for him for President.

This is not a tough call.

Donald Trump is an ignorant, unprincipled, amoral policy lightweight opposed to free market capitalism and limited government.

• His ignorance of economic and national security issues is breathtaking. He makes up most of his policy views on the fly in interviews. He knows far less about policy than does a regular Wall Street Journal reader, and he cannot hold a coherent in-depth conversation about the economy or America’s role in the world. I don’t expect him to be a national security expert but it would be nice if a future commander-in-chief understood the strategic importance of NATO rather than thinking of it as a potential revenue source. In transcripts of two recent interviews he reminds me of students who try to answer questions in class when they have not done the reading. He is faking it on policy, and not that well.
• He is not doing his homework. I don’t blame him (much) for starting his campaign as a policy novice. Yet he appears to be no better informed today than when his campaign began. Policy is serious, hard work. He shows no interest and no effort in learning anything about the issues and decisions he might face as President. As a result he babbles in interviews, avoids Q&A sessions with voters, and changes the subject whenever he is stumped (several times per interview on average). He should be improving over time and he’s not. Even if he intends to reject the advice of experts and be an outside-the-box thinker, he should at a minimum understand what he is rejecting and where that will lead him.
• His policy views are cartoon-like when not entirely absent. Shouting STRENGTH is not a policy. His views seem to be unmoored by any intellectual structure or philosophical approach. He is unprincipled: he appears to view the world through dual lenses of transactions and of people he likes and dislikes. He treats other nations as competing firms and acts as if America’s only overseas interest is in maximizing revenue streams paid by foreign governments. His fiscal solutions are to cut waste, fraud, and abuse and to get other nations to pay America for military protection. He […]