“It’s easy to see how someone can sit out an election.”
I’m sure Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden will appreciate your non vote.
Your "argument" that the Arkansas Medusa or Joe McGaffe Biden will appreciate conservative non-votes is wrong on several scores.
First, most of us so inclined vote third party and that is a principled action and expression of conservatism and American patriotism in a very dark era. In 2012 it was my privilege to vote for FR's own Eternal Vigilance.
Second and more importantly, the GOP hack caucus relentlessly assaulted actual conservatives to vote for Romney in 2012 (Obozo in whiteface) because, well, he wasn't Obozo. But he WAS Obozo in all but irrelevant skin color. That argument failed in 2012 and it will fail The Donald in 2016. Unless and until The Donald obtains some knowledge and functioning brain cells, some character and civility, some control over his boorish and ignorant mouth, immerses himself in the rich tapestry of conservatism (which will easily survive bordermania but not the destruction by the acid of ignorance of what remains of the Republican Party) and he is quite capable of learning as an alumnus of an Ivy League Wharton School of Finance at University of Pennsylvania, He just chooses not to learn. The Donald will remain the Kim Kardashian of presidential politics. BIG ratings, no substance whatsoever (except so far on guns and borders) other than a botoxed or siliconed "brain."
Some have posted that without building the Great Wall of Texas and Arizona and California, conservatism will no longer be relevant. Tell that nonsense to veterans of the soviet gulag who waited 70 years for Ronaldus Maximus to put the USSR out of the prisoner's misery.
Holy Scripture and, in no particular order, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Adam Smith, Cicero, Virgil, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Calvin Coolidge, William F. Buckley, Jr., Bill Rusher, Joe McCarthy, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, William Wilberforce, Edmund Burke, Phyllis Schlafly, Thomas Sowell, Jack Kemp (and his inherent personal decency), Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Douglas MacArthur, Robert Bork, Joe McCarthy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Thomas a Kempis, Leo XIII, Saint Pius X, Alfred Thayer Mahan, are but examples of our conservatism, our movement, our political commitment.
Arrayed in apparent ignorance against all of this, we have Obozo, anything named Clinton, McCain, Romney, and now (for the most part) The Donald. The Donald does not burden the LoFo's with actual ideas which make their heads hurt. He appeals instead to the mob "mentality." He tells 'em what they want to hear. He panders as he treats the POTUS race as just another "reality show." He gets their attention with his absolute uninformed rudeness and knee jerk psychological reactions.
Conservatism is a rich tapestry of the best in the human race: the best that was, the best that is and the best that ever will be, short of the glory of God.
If I cannot have Scott Walker, then I will have Ted Cruz. If not Cruz, then Rubio or Jindal. Ben Carson is an outstanding neurosurgeon, a fine man and completely over his head in POTUS politics. Rand Paul is a dead issue. Jebbie was never a contender. Carly Fiorina MAY be VPOTUS material. Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Willard, Pataki, Rick Santorum, Gilmore, not a chance.
Walker had it right as he departed. Minor conservative candidates should get out now to concentrate the conservative vote on an actual conservative (I favor Cruz for that role) candidate.
Immigration: NO Middle Easterners and strict control over the borders. Also review the millions who arrived or stayed illegally and send them to their foreign homes. Get this issue behind us so that we may unite for a conservative agenda behind one candidate dedicated to a truly conservative agenda.
Agenda: Restoration of the US Constitution. The babies, marriage, full religious liberty, RTKBA no exceptions, turn BATF into a private sector convenience store chain, defund Planned Barrenhood, defund gummint edjumakashun (PS 666), defund higher edumakashun (I paid one thousand dollars per yearn for a private unsubsidized college education and my kids have paid $40.000 per year. Abolish Cabinet Departments of Labor, Commerce, Edumakashun, Energy, most of State, HUD, much of HHS, and Interior, "Civil Rights" Division and other mischief making subdivisions at Justice. Move on to abolish such unconstitutional and/or immoral and/or outrageous and, in any event, utterly unnecessary programs and agencies as Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency, Common Core, Infernal Revenue "Service," global anything, World Trade Organization, NAFTA, the new "Pacific Trade Agreement" and its offspring, the "United" Nations, the National Labor Relations Board, the US "Civil Rights" Commission, the US "Equal" Employment Opportunity Commission, the lying Bureau of Labor Statistics, etc., etc., ad infinitum ad nauseam. Revise all federal law and regulations accordingly.
I could continue indefinitely but I trust that readers get the point. Who knows? Maybe Trump will understand someday the foregoing and other aspects of conservatism as well and even credibly commit to enact policy accordingly.