Dear RNC, beloved GOP of my political infancy and early adulthood:
I know you have been trying to reach me for the past several years; the letters come with precisioned regularity. They thank me for all my past support, or offer me another survey that ends with the opportunity to donate money to the cause. Yet no one has ever reached out to find out why I have become silent and ceased responding. So today I am going to tell you.
Why today? because after months of mailed letters, someone actually called on the phone, and tried the same spiel all your letters have be doing, this time hyping the great presidential candidate Donald Trump for me to support. But once again, that person wasn’t prepared to to actually listen.
In all the years of our relationship you have never listened. You have gone your own way. You have always assumed I will follow along. After all, there is no way I would support the opinions of the opposition, the DNC, so I had to fall into your camp.
But I joined you when you were the party of Reagan. More accurately, I suppose, while Reagan was with you, because even then you were never really with Reagan. He was just a convenient banner to get people to support you, so once again you had the numbers you need to do what you wanted to do, without really listening to the people who were giving you the votes.
I knew the senior Bush wasn’t Reagan, but voted for him, and I am actually more aligned with my votes for both Bush presidents, corporate crony presidents though they were, because they were closer to Reagan than anyone you have given me since then.
There have been all sort of suitable candidates for me in the past three elections, but you have never allowed me the opportunity to support them, instead giving vapid “Democrat-lite” options like McCain and Romney. I held my nose and voted for them, mostly because I really liked Palin and Ryan.
But no more. No matter how much I may distrust Hillary, both because of her views and her obvious ignorance (every crisis her excuse is that she wasn’t aware — but her job was to be aware), that doesn’t mean I can vote for a man like Trump. I can’t trust him. Who knows what he really believes from what he says, or the way he constantly changes. And neither his personal or business life is anything I would want to see modeled in his role as President. He has no sense of how our government runs. He has the psychology of a tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood, ready and willing to fire or crush anyone who disagrees with him.
So no matter how much I may be concerned about what a Hillary presidency means, I am even more concerned with the potential of a Trump presidency. At least if Hillary does the damage, we can point and say they are the ones that did it. But when Trump does the damage, and do damage he certainly will, everyone will blame us, we who were given no choice but him, and thus he will sound the death-knell of any serious chance for the vision of Reagan for a long time to come. A candidate who has nothing in common with Reagan will be associated with him and thus people will be told they can never trust those people and their conservative ways. Never mind that Trump is probably the least conservative, most crony (anti-) capitalist, a fascist with delusions of grandeur who will run the goverment for the benefit of business.
You assume that there are only two options: RNC or DNC. I disagree. This year, instead of voting against one by voting for the other, if I cannot vote for one, I will vote for neither. There are other options, ones I can vote for in good conscience.
A friend of mine said that “of two evils, choose neither”. I agree, but I also say choose good. There is always good that can be found. I won’t be voting for any candidates by party this year. They will have to sell me individually. And perhaps, if you ever choose to come back, instead of being “DNC-lite”, I might vote Republican again some day.
At The Rainbow 