If Donald Trump becomes the president of the USA, it would be good if he builds a wall on the southern border, as he says he will; very good if he bars Muslim immigrants out, even if only temporarily, as he says he will; great if he crushes ISIS, as he says he will.

But there would also be a lot of pleasure, of the Schadenfreude variety, in watching him pulverize Hillary Clinton on his way to the White House.

The New York Times reports that her slaves are digging up all the dirt they can on Trump. (They don’t put it like that.) Have they taken any thought to just how hard Trump can hit back? Who is the more vulnerable to accusations of a disreputable past, Trump or Hillary? Who has more and worse scandals in train?

Who is better at striking with killing words on the stump? Who but Donald Trump?

America is getting down to the fight, and a dirty fight it will be.

Dan Calabrese writes at Canada Free Press:

I completely understand why some conservatives are horrified at the prospect of Donald Trump being the Republican nominee for president. I understand their discomfort with his bluster, with his lack of any history supporting conservative ideas, with his many contributions to Democrat candidates, with some elements of his track record in business. Some of it bothers me too, although I do think a lot of the handwringing is over things that don’t really matter that much.

But look, sure, nominating a guy like Donald Trump is in all kinds of ways contrary to what conservative movement types have advocated for decades. I wanted a conservative governor with a really solid record of governing achievements using conservative policy ideas …  But hey, that’s how it went. Right now Trump appears to be the odds-on favorite for the nomination, and a lot of conservatives are beside themselves of it. I get it.

But what I don’t get is the currently popular fad of self-styled conservative intellectuals declaring that they will never vote for Trump, even if he is the nominee, and even if it means Hillary Clinton becomes president. If the thinking here is that Trump is so far beyond-the-pale unacceptable that we must bite the bullet and support a Democrat this time around – lest we subject the nation to the horrors of Trump – I would like to remind you of something important:

Whatever Trump’s faults, Hillary Clinton is far worse in every conceivable way.

You don’t like the way Trump has made his money? I get that. What about the way she’s made hers? The Clintons set up a “foundation” that’s little more than a slush fund through which they filter money that comes from foreign governments and the exorbitant speaking fees that Bill and Hillary extort from big bankers, universities and business groups hoping to buy influence in the event Hillary becomes president. Whatever the problems with Trump University, they pale in comparison to that.

You don’t like the fact that Trump games the political system to his own advantage? You don’t like the way he’s used bankruptcy laws to his advantage? Totally understood. But what Trump does is manipulate the law as it is to his own advantage. What Hillary does is out-and-out break the law, whether that means putting national security secrets at risk or wiping her e-mail server of content that should have been archived and preserved. And that’s just the start. Let’s not forget Whitewater. Let’s not forget Cattlegate. Let’s now forget the Rose Law Firm billing records.

She may yet be indicted for the e-mail thing, but even if she skates everyone knows it will be because Loretta Lynch caved to politics over evidence, and the FBI has already indicated it may go scorched earth and release all the evidence against her if that’s the case. 

We ardently hope they do!

This is one of the most corrupt human beings ever to stain the world of American politics, and that is not an easy thing to do.

You think Trump is vindictive toward people who get in his way? Yeah, I’ve noticed it too. What about a woman who publicly attacks the victims of her own husband’s sexual misconduct? …

You don’t like the fact that Trump inherited his money? He’s certainly not the first to do so, nor will he be the last, but as you wish. What about a woman whose entire political viability relies solely on the political achievements of her husband? Hillary Clinton has never done anything to recommend her as a strong candidate for the presidency. Even the impressive-looking positions on her resume she only got because the road was cleared for her, and everyone knew the only reason she wanted them was to position herself for the presidency. Her actual track record in these jobs is so unimpressive, it would disqualify any candidate whose party was not determined by hook or by crook to hand her the nomination.

Oh, by the way, you’ve noted a handful of times where it appeared Trump lied? Maybe he did. Hillary Clinton lies just about every time she opens her mouth. She lied about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia. She lied about the billing records. She lied about classified information on her e-mail server. She lied about being named after Sir Edmund Hillary. She lied about being rejected by the Marines and by NASA. She even lied to family members of one of the dead in Benghazi about what really caused the death of their loved one. [She told the same lie to all of them – ed] She lies with such shameless and remorseless ease that people have stopped noticing she’s lying. Dishonesty and corruption, we’re told, are now “priced into the Clinton brand” as if they don’t even matter. …

Hillary Clinton is one of the most despicable characters to appear on the American political scene in the history of this nation. …

So all you conservatives who are preening for your fellow conservatives about how you, too, are far too pure and virtuous to ever vote for Donald Trump can take your high-and-mighty pronouncements and …

We think Senator Ted Cruz would be the best GOP candidate for the 2016 presidential election. We like what he says, what he stands for. He is strong, brilliant, confident – and right. And he has the presence, the personality, the manner a president should have. In fact we like everything about him – except of course his religiousness, but that doesn’t seem to be having any adverse effect on his political thinking. Here he is making his principles plain in an interview with Genevieve Wood of The Foundry (part of the Heritage network).  The principles he states are ours too.

We know that not all our regular readers agree with our opinion of Senator Cruz.

We hope those who do not agree will tell us why.

… or to the ignominy she deserves?

A recent Time magazine cover …

is revised to be far more apt:

This version is from here, where the touch-up of the original is attributed to IownTheWorld.com

The picture and the following text by Roger L Simon come from PJ Media:

Whether they know it or not, Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, center-right folks, all those who favor smaller government and increased freedom, do have a principal enemy. But … it’s no longer Barack Obama. He is over. He was already a lame duck when Obamacare plucked most of his remaining feathers. The damage he can do may still be serious, but most of it will be reparable.

The principal enemy for the right and the center-right is now Hillary Clinton, the vastly favored frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. She is so far in front, in fact, that her competitors are not even in hailing distance. Hillary is the one who can consolidate and solidify the “gains” of the Obama era in a way Obama himself never could because she is much more politically savvy — Obama was only savvy about getting elected, not governing — and has the backing of her even more politically savvy husband. Hillary is the one who can fully remake the United States into some version of Western Europe or, yet more frighteningly, China, a permanently stratified state capitalism governed by quasi-totalitarian bureaucrats.(We can call this system Soros Marxism, meaning a ruling clique of increasingly rich corporate czars employing a propagandistic veneer of socialist equality to keep the power and wealth for themselves.) …

The New York Times (the very model of that propagandistic veneer) already knows their bread is buttered with Hillary, not Obama. They demonstrated that … with their revisionist article on Benghazi, bent on taking that scandal (Hillary’s Achilles’ heel) off the table for the coming elections or at least seriously defusing it.

For the New York Times’s special pleading on this issue, and criticism of its spurious case, see our post, Signs of Democrats’ desperation over the scandalous tragedy of Benghazi, December 29, 2013.

Republicans would do well to redouble their efforts to make sure this particular obfuscation does not succeed by doing the proper research and communicating the results to the public — succinctly and repeatedly.

If the Republicans could do anything so sensible it would be mighty nice!

Benghazi could be used to bring Hillary down permanently. It wouldn’t even be difficult. It would take nothing more than the resolution to accuse her of dereliction of duty, extreme incompetence, and the callous sacrifice of American lives, day after day, at every possible opportunity, through every available medium, loud and clear.

But will they do it? Or will they McCain the issue ? Which is to say, politely overlook it. Or Romney it? Which is to say, touch on it ever so lightly and immediately let it go.

Maybe one of the younger bolder men of the party – Ted Cruz perhaps? –  will seize the hammer of Benghazi and flatten Hillary with it.