Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. We have a binary choice. One or the other will be our next president. Let's be clear if you are a Republican or a conservative and you don't vote for Trump, you are helping Hillary Clinton become the next president, whether you vote for her or not.
I served in the House of Representatives and United States Senate during Bill Clinton's presidency. I saw the scandals, the lies and the corruption up close and personal. I saw Clinton's vetoes of commonsense bills like the ban on partial-birth abortions and welfare reform in large part because of pressure from Hillary and her allies in the administration!
But eight years of being the progressive force in the Clinton White House was not enough, Hillary would turn around and carpetbag her way into the Senate from New York. There she showed her true colors leading the charge on abortion, opposing sanctions on Iran's nuclear program and voting to raise taxes, bail out Wall Street and explode the size of government.
It's a true statement of how far the Democratic Party has lurched left when she has found detractors within her own base. Her record as a Senator, and more recently as Secretary of State, is one that should excite even the most hardened leftist. But this is exactly why every conservative should oppose her.
As a Secretary of State, from the Russian reset, which included canceling missile defense systems for our closest allies in Eastern Europe to advocating for intervention in Libya, she has been a disaster. Inexplicably she supported radical Islamists against our allies in Egypt in the Arab Spring and stood silent as the No. 1 sponsor of Islamic terror, Iran, crushed the best chance to topple our most dangerous enemy. Add to this the key role she played in the Syrian disaster we see playing out on the nightly news, the turning of our back on Israel, and tragically the disaster in Benghazi. With that foreign policy record, Hillary Clinton is the last person we should promote to commander in chief.
But what really pushed me over the edge was the death of my good friend Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia was the gold standard by which all conservative legal minds should be judged. He was a brilliant man, who combined wit and reason to not just make rulings but persuade his colleagues on the Court. Now our next president will appoint his successor.
Worse yet, a President Clinton would more than likely appoint two or three more Supreme Court justices. This would set in motion not just the next four to eight years of our nation's policy making and jurisprudence, but the next generation. No doubt she would pick 40- or 50-something-year-olds who see the Constitution as an annoyance to be discarded on the ash bin of history. Over the next 30 years, we will lose our republic and become another godless autocratic European socialist state devoid of religious liberty or value for founding principles men like Madison engrained in our Constitution. We will cease to be America.
Some conservatives have a problem with Donald Trump. Many of them have stood on purist principle to declare Never Trump. But by declaring Never Trump, they have declared they are sitting out this election at a time we all need to coalesce around the candidate that has not only vowed but has produced a list of outstanding nominees for the Supreme Court.
In the end the court is everything. I don't want to be to blame for the wreckage we all know would come through a Clinton Supreme Court. I want to look myself in the mirror knowing I did everything I could to stop it. And that is why this conservative will be voting for Donald J. Trump this November. 
Rick Santorum is a former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.
This article was originally published at conservativehq.com. Used with permission.
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