Mike Lee is dead to me

 So the Utah Senator, for the second time, is endorsing the Very Stable Genius for president. 

It's interesting that he couches it in such a way to make him look savvy enough to acknowledge that at least a significant number of post-Americans - maybe including himself, but not necessarily - have problems with the former occupant of the Oval Office:

“Look, whether you like Donald Trump or not, whether you agree with everything he says or not, he is our one opportunity to choose order over chaos and putting America first over America last,” Lee said during an appearance on Fox News’ Ingraham Angle on Friday.

A bit more cautious than the way he went about it in 2020, likening the VSG to Captain Moroni, a figure from the Book of Mormon's elaborate and unverifiable cosmology, who supposedly was the general of one of four tribes that supposedly peopled North America around the time of Christ. (Look, I don't want to get too far into looking sniffingly at American denominations with weird theologies. There are many fine Mormons, Brigham Young is a rightly respected university, I have friends who are happy, stable family people who are Moonies, and a dear, now-departed aunt and uncle of mine were devout Christian Scientists. The point is that Lee chose a brave-commander type as a comparison for Trump. He did later have to walk it back a bit. Although the whole matter of denominations with weird theologies may raise questions about whether there's something in the American character that makes us susceptible to signing onto devotions that run counter to what our better judgements are telling us.)

And it's a far cry from where Lee was coming from in 2016:

“Hey look, Steve, I get it. You want me to endorse Trump,” Lee (R-Utah) told NewsMaxTV host Steve Malzberg. “We can get into that if you want. We can get into the fact that he accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK. We can go through the fact that he’s made statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerant. We can get into the fact that he’s wildly unpopular in my state, in part because my state consists of people who are members of a religious minority church. A people who were ordered exterminated by the governor of Missouri in 1838. And, statements like that make them nervous.”

Lee wound up voting for Evan McMullen that year (as did I). 

Lee comes from a family of legal heavy-hitters, and his own clerkships are indicative of a guy with a sound Constitutional grounding. 

But consider the moral deterioration of the "best friend" Lee mentions above. That would be Ted Cruz.

I loved Cruz's determination to roll back the "Affordable" Care Act, although in retrospect I can see that my loathing of this further governmental incursion into health care clouded my ability to see how quixotic Cruz's efforts were. And Cruz's proposal to eliminate the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce and Housing were precisely why I was enthused about him as a possible president. I met him at a campaign stop in an ice cream parlor in Columbus, Indiana days before the fateful May 2016 night when he lost the Indiana primary, sealing the dynamics of that year's race.

But Cruz, like so many with impeccable conservative bona fides (think Rick Perry, who called the VSG a "cancer on conservatism" and went on to be his Energy Secretary), decided to set having been humiliated aside and get on the Squirrel Hair Express. My esteem for him went from admiration to contempt.

But at this late date, what is the excuse, besides the morally evasive "binary choice" argument, for getting behind a candidate who is on record saying "a Massive Fraud [sic] of this type allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution"? Who characterizes his opponent as a "stark raving lunatic . . . who is leading this country to hell"?

I'm going to try to trot out the following exhortation as sparingly as I can in the next ten months, so that it doesn't lose its gravity: I'm staying home the first Tuesday in November, and you should, too.