I cannot believe I have to write this article, frankly. Believe me, I would much rather discuss something truly important like Hillary’s apparently criminal mishandling of classified information, Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s recent surge in polling, or perhaps the long-overdue expiry of the crony capitalist Export-Import Bank. In a Trump-less world, maybe I would be writing about Planned Parenthood’s barbaric and illegal harvesting and selling of fetal tissue. Instead, I find myself talking about The Donald, as virtually every talking head in the country has been for the last few weeks.

At the outset, let us establish what this article is not. It is not a prediction that Trump’s candidacy for president is on the verge of spontaneous combustion. Unlike most political observers in this country, I believe that the real estate mogul’s support within the GOP is both real and sustainable, though it remains to be seen whether he will actually sustain it. That’s not what this piece is about. This article is about why no real conservative should ever so much as consider voting for a RINO (Republican In Name Only) like Donald Trump. It’s about exposing a con man, a liberal in sheep’s clothing, whose candidacy threatens to put Hillary in the White House.

Donald Trump is simply not a conservative, and he never has been. Although he is now a registered independent (note: not a Republican), it wasn’t too long ago when The Donald was a registered Democrat. “I probably identify more as a Democrat,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in 2004. He went on to contend that “the economy does better under Democrats” and that “we’ve had pretty bad disaster under the Republicans.” Not exactly the strongest endorsement of conservative values. In addition, Trump has a long record of donating to Democratic candidates, including Hillary and Obama. How is going to explain that in a debate with Hillary? In 1999, Trump commented that “the Republicans are just too crazy right.” Those people he referred to as crazies are now the ones fueling his rise.

Trump has a long history of supporting unions, even indicating that union bosses do not currently have enough power and need to be brought “back to their rightful place at the table.” An integral component of conservatism, at least in my book, is to despise unions’ manipulation of workers and businesses, not promote it. Trump is also on the record in favor of an assault weapons ban, which would be an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. He has also written in favor a longer waiting period to purchase a gun. And if the prospective gun-buyer gets mugged or shot while waiting for his gun? Too bad, I guess. Recently, Trump has criticized gun control in general terms without acknowledging, explaining, or backing down from his past support. Donald Trump has called for higher taxes. He was pro-abortion before he was against it- conveniently, this flip-flop occurred right when he announced that he might run for president in 2012.

All this alone is enough to make Trump by far the most liberal of the seventeen Republicans aspiring for the GOP nomination. But I haven’t even mentioned the worst yet. In his 2000 book, Trump describes himself as “a liberal” on health care issues and calls on the federal government to “work out the details of a new single-payer plan.” For those who are not familiar with the term, a single-payer health care system is the same thing as socialized health care, in which the government controls and funds the entire health care system. It’s the system of choice for communist countries. It is far to the left of Obamacare. (Incidentally, Trump suggested that until his single-payer system becomes reality, we should implement a temporary plan that is exactly like Obamacare minus the individual mandate.) It boggles the mind that conservatives are coalescing around a candidate who has supported a communist health care plan- and tellingly, has not disavowed his past support until this very day.

It is for this reason that Donald Trump is scared to talk about actual issues. He has no policy director and no Issues tab on his website, and he just rails against illegals 24/7 without proposing any realistic, comprehensive solutions. He has demagogued John McCain, criticized Jeb Bush and Scott Walker (both of whom are infinitely more conservative than him), and gave out Lindsey Graham’s personal cell phone number. The only things he doesn’t talk about are issues and solutions. Because he can’t. Because the minute he starts talking policy, he will be forced to account for his decades-long and detailed record of unadulterated liberalism, and his supporters will abandon him en masse k’tinok habore’ach mibeis hasefer. Apparently, The Donald has a “foolproof” plan to beat ISIL. He just won’t tell us what it is, beyond finding the right general to wage war. (How he’ll be more successful than any other candidate at finding a good general is anyone’s guess.) He claims he will build a great massive wall on the southern border, but he won’t tell us how he will get congressional Democrats on board with that idea. Because he can’t, and he won’t. Newsflash: Every credible candidate in the GOP primary field, including Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, wants to build an impenetrable fence on our southern border to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. But unlike Trump, they aren’t promising to do something that is outside the president’s power. The president does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally build a wall on the border. Mr. Trump vows that he will be “the greatest jobs president that G-d ever created” and that he will “make America great again.” If you think these guarantees are short on specifics, it’s because they are. Trump cannot say he’ll lower taxes as president, because then he is going to be asked why in the past he wanted to raise taxes. He can’t talk about Obamacare, because then he will have to answer for his support of communist health care. In short, The Donald cannot talk about policy with any measure of detail, because then he will be exposed as the liberal con man that he is. The fact is that Donald Trump is so far to the left that some of his stances place him to the left of Hillary and Obama.

It may surprise some of my regular readers to learn that I used to be a Tea Party enthusiast. Being a staunch conservative, I was thrilled at first by the ascendancy of a widespread movement with the goal of advancing the conservative agenda. Why I quit the Tea Party is not the topic of this article, but there is one point that I want to bring out. During the 2012 cycle, when Trump floated the possibility of running for president then, I still identified with the Tea Party. (I was a Herman Cain supporter from the outset- is that Tea Party enough?) But not for one moment did I even consider backing Trump. Because Donald Trump is simply not a real Tea Party guy. He’s not a real conservative. He’s not even a moderate. The man is a liberal con man who is exploiting the Republican Party for his own personal gain (namely, the promotion of his brand and the pumping up of his ego). And he has a long, undeniable liberal record to prove it.

Of course, Trump’s liberalism is not the only problem with his bid for the Republican nomination. There is much to be said about the fact that every single credible poll of the broader electorate, including from USA Today/Suffolk University, Monmouth, PPP, and CNN, shows that Trump has a zero percent chance of winning a general rejection matchup even versus Bernie Sanders, let alone against Hillary. I could also go on for hours about how Trump’s volatile and unpredictable temperament would jeopardize our national security and turn us into even bigger global laughingstocks than we are under this president. (If you think Ronald Reagan would have denigrated American prisoners of war or would have given out a political opponent’s personal phone number “for fun,” you are clueless to the point of delusional.) But as valid as these points are, they should not be relevant, because no conservative Republican should even come close to voting for a leftist like Trump in the first place. Other arguments, while true, muddy the real argument against Trump: that he is not the least bit conservative. It is frankly laughable when someone says, “I like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.” What these people are really saying is, “I support the most right-wing member of the Senate and also someone who supports socialized health care, increased union rights, higher taxes, and recently flip-flopped on abortion.” And has been pro-violating the Second Amendment. And donated thousands of dollars to the Democrat who he will probably square off against if he wins the GOP nod. In short, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. That’s what matters. If you are a conservative and plan to vote for The Donald, you are lying to yourself. Period. Trump’s record is a story of liberalism if it is a story of anything (with inconsistency and flip-flopping a close second).

So where is Donald Trump’s support coming from? What about him appeals to so many Republicans from across the ideological spectrum of the party? Republicans are backing Trump because they are fed up with the political establishment. This simple fact is the most legitimate aspect of Trump’s campaign for president. Of course conservatives are fed up! We have a president who has given us Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, excessive carbon emissions regulation, and a bad deal with Iran that has more holes than a Trump golf course. He seems to believe that the Constitution is merely a suggestion and has moved unilaterally to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants while doing little to stop the flow of migrants unlawfully flooding across our porous southern border. His Department of Justice has refused to act against “sanctuary cities” which are harboring these immigrants in blatant defiance of the law. Trump’s supporters are upset and I’m upset too, as any Republican should be! But Donald Trump, for all his angry rhetoric, is not the solution. As GOP strategist Rick Wilson put it a couple of weeks ago in his brilliant piece on Trump for Politico Magazine, “you think we’re dismissing the message, but we’re dismissing the messenger.” Donald Trump is not the right man to lead the conservative resurgence in the aftermath of Obama’s presidency, because on some issues he’s even less conservative than the president he wants to replace. Donald Trump is a great salesman, and he is a great manipulator too (as he himself proudly admits in his books). Any good salesman knows that you must identify a need that your prospective buyers have, real or imagined, in order to get them to buy your product. The Republican Party needs angry rhetoric, and Trump has stepped into the role of the angry outsider. But as we’ve demonstrated, he’s a fake. The Trump candidacy is a scam, as evidenced by the mogul’s liberal record. Do you really believe that Donald Trump will even try to solve the crisis at the border if he is elected president? What makes you think he won’t flip-flop on that issue, just as he already has on several others? Do you believe he will even try to repeal Obamacare, when he champions a health care system far more liberal? Do you think you can know whether or not he’ll stand with Israel when his record has all the direction of a leaf lost in a hurricane? What The Donald is for today is likely what he will be against tomorrow, and vice versa. His record is unambiguous about that; his frequent vacillations on issues like gun control, abortion, and party identity show that he cannot be trusted to stick to his guns. In my mind, the biggest proof that Trump doesn’t care about ideology as much as his personal promotion may be his standing threat to run as a third-party candidate if he doesn’t like “how well [he’s] treated” by the GOP. What is that statement if not an admission that a decision to run as an independent (and effectively destroy any chance the Republicans have at taking back the White House) will revolve solely around Trump and whether the Republican establishment hurts his feelings by attacking him too much? For Donald Trump, it’s all about him, not electing a conservative next November. And why should he care? After all, he’s never been a conservative anyway.

For anyone who is still deluding him/herself and still somehow believes that Trump might have a legitimate conservative bone in his body, let me leave you with a quote from The Donald that demonstrates just what a phony he is, even on his primary (and only) issue of immigration. Following Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss to Obama, our very own Donald Trump, the anti-illegal immigrant crusader who indicated that he thinks many or most Mexican immigrants are murderers and drug dealers, said this to explain Romney’s loss: “Comments and policies of Mitt Romney and other Republican candidates during this election were seen by Hispanics and Asians as hostile to them.” He added, “The Democrats didn’t have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spirited about it.” How can anyone be so naive and gullible as to believe that Trump’s professed anger at illegal immigrants is real when he made comments like this just three years ago? Like everything else in his extremely warped universe, Trump’s immigration rhetoric is all part of an elaborate act, the goal being self-promotion, as it always is with The Donald. His past comments on immigration prove that he’s not really such a hardliner. Donald Trump is attempting to exploit the Republican Party for his own personal gain. Let’s not help him succeed.

[TLS welcomes your opinion pieces by submitting them to [email protected]]