Buzzfeed Editor Ben Smith’s Dad: I’m a Conservative for Hillary!

Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith’s father, a Republican judge, came out in support of Hillary Clinton from the Right in a post for Medium entitled “Why This Right-Winger Is For Her.”

Robert Smith, described by observers as a neoconservative judge in New York, explains how the neoconservative wing that came from the Democratic Party is now apparently going back to the Democrats during the Trump Era. His son’s publication Buzzfeed is staunchly Establishment, pushing the status-quo line from both sides of the aisle.

Robert Smith writes:

My conservative credentials are pretty good. I’m a converted Democrat, but I converted a long time ago. I survived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as a supporter of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. I was appointed by a Republican governor to New York State’s highest court, where I took some flak for voting in favor of capital punishment and against gay marriage. Romney’s defeat in 2012 broke my heart.

This year, I’m going to vote for a Democrat for president — the first time I’ve done it in 36 years — and I think the decision is easy. Hillary Clinton is the only responsible choice, and I don’t understand why so few of my fellow conservatives see it that way…

Smith makes clear that Trump is the reason he is switching to Clinton:

Donald Trump is a liar on a scale that makes Hillary Clinton look like George Washington. He’s also a crass, bullying, ignorant, impulsive demagogue who stokes people’s hates and fears. But that’s not the worst of it — those are just the symptoms. I don’t know how anyone can watch Trump on TV for ten minutes without seeing that he’s pathetically insecure, and that the insecurity generates a grotesque egomania….

…Maybe I’m a coward, but I’m not ready to face a world in which an egomaniac with impulse control as weak as Trump’s is in charge of the United States. I don’t think he’ll start a nuclear war or destroy our freedom. I think our institutions are strong enough to survive him. I think so. But I’m one of those cautious guys. I don’t want to take the chance.

So I’m with her.