Almost a week ago I received an email from a far more senior Republican asking me to share the above list in my blog. Reasons to vote for Trump. Ways to explain that although you are voting for President Trump's policies you aren't really voting for Donald Trump the man. It is an e-mail that has been making the rounds for months or years now. (I feel like I've seen it before, I just couldn't track down the origins.) It was probably designed to reach out to those conservatives who just really don't like Donald Trump. Not the professional Never Trumpers who make the talk show rounds --the professional Never Trumpers always seem to be people who last voted Republican in 2008, or 1996, or 1984 but still claim to represent "true conservative values"-- but the kind of conservatives who actually are conservative but have a visceral dislike of Donald Trump. One of my dearest friends is a life-long conservative who just finds the President grating. She finds him so grating she has avoided watching television news for the past four years. She may or may not vote next month. As far as I am concerned that is her choice. For each of us there is a line in the sand we will not cross.
Republicans have been trying to reach out across that line for years. I know a lot of older conservatives who in the aftermath of 2016 convinced themselves that ANYONE could have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016. (As there were a dozen plus serious Republican contenders in 2015 who couldn't even beat Donald Trump I don't think that is true.) I don't think an innocuous go-along to get-along milquetoast Republican could have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. The president has done a pretty good job of beating the odds ever since. He hasn't had a lot of help. He has a lot of enemies. Both the enemies without and the enemies within.
President Trump has had to contend with inherited wars overseas. An unelected bureaucracy that doesn't believe a duly elected president should be allowed to serve. An unelected bureaucracy that doesn't just hate President Trump, they hate everyone who dared to vote for him and they hate average Americans. He's had to deal with a shrieking mob of haters for three plus years. This year President Trump faced a nonsensical impeachment, a pandemic --persistent accusations of racist xenophobia when he pointed out that the pandemic came from Wuhan, China-- an economy that went from gangbusters to life support in a matter of weeks, a Republican Senate caucus that may or may not get with the program in the next three weeks, and a media that by and large has given up on journalism and instead is openly attacking any journalist who isn't a Biden surrogate. (Rather bizarrely Osama Bin Laden's niece is now being attacked by elitist media types not because her uncle was Osama Bin Laden, but because she dared to point out that Donald Trump is standing up for western values and there are a lot of people who want to see us fall, want to see free speech fall, want to obliterate freedom of religion, want to obliterate our way of life as well as steal our lives --and she should know.)
If you have been avoiding watching the news for the past four years you may have missed all of that. I sort of wish I had missed the last couple of months. The last few months have been awful. Tomorrow I am going to an exorcism. An actual exorcism, not a screening of the movie The Exorcism. I'm going to an exorcism tomorrow because earlier this week a howling mob attacked the statue in front of a Catholic church in the next town over from me. (You can watch the video here.)
The above email landed in my inbox around the time the church was under assault. I sent the sender a polite e-mail and said I'd get to it. I was distracted. It has been a distracting year. I also recently put myself irately on the record as being opposed to plagiarism. (You can read about that here.) As my blog is not actually MY blog, it is the platform of the MarinGOP where I am allowed to blog, this left me in an awkward position. I didn't want to just put my "own spin" on someone else's words and ideas.
Frankly I'm NOT a Never Trumper. I'm not even one of those conservatives who just cringes at the President's tweets. I'm not even sure if I qualify as a "conservative." I'm a registered Republican. I'm voting a straight Republican ticket next month. I campaigned for Donald Trump in 2016. I did a few stints as a phone volunteer. (Call out to all you great phone volunteer warriors, you guys are my heroes and heroines... I'm really not one of nature's little cold callers.) I'm also an ex-Democrat. So is Donald Trump.
Maybe that is why I like Donald Trump. He's human proof of the idea that we evolve. We evolve intellectually. We change. Sometimes circumstances change.
And that is why I am voting for Donald Trump.
In 2020 I think he is the only candidate in the race who actually is capable of having new ideas and adapting to changing circumstances. Donald Trump rolls with the punches. Knock him down and he'll get back up. I think of him as the bounceback president. He bounces back. It is inspiring. Especially now, when America needs to bounce back.
So this is what I am voting for next month:
1) I'm voting for Donald Trump. I think he has proved throughout his first term in office that he always has the best interests of America at heart and he never gives up. I think he is the best man for the job.
2) I'm voting for the First Amendment. Because the New Left doesn't believe we, as citizens, have rights. I don't want to give up my freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly. (In the event we can find evidence of a press free of extreme bias in 2020 I don't want to give that up either.)
3) I'm voting for diversity. Diversity of thought, diversity of belief. I live in a county that is a blue lake. I live in a Progressive county. And I DON'T have a lot of faith in Progressives' commitment to actual diversity. I want to think for myself, and in Donald Trump's America I can think for myself. In Progressive America I'd be willing to bet there will be a thought police before we run out of chicken and toilet paper.
4) I'm voting for American jobs and American industry. Donald Trump is the first serious candidate in my lifetime who has actually fought to save American industry. We need to be a country that makes things.
5) I'm voting for safety. A couple of months ago I was stuck in my car during a street protest in Northern California. A woman with the manic dead eyes of a cult member held a cardboard sign up in front of my window. It said, "No Justice, No Peace." I'm pretty sure that was a promise, not a threat. In HER America there will be no justice and no peace. I want a country where we all have a shot at justice and peace.
6) I'm voting for the future. I think Donald Trump actually has ideas that can help us navigate the troubled waters of the future. (I think Joe Biden's team seems trapped in the past of out of touch campus radicalism. And I don't think it is cruel to point out the obvious... no one seems to think the former Vice President has much of a future.)
7) I'm voting for the Bill of Rights. As an American citizen I have rights.... Donald Trump respects the Bill of Rights. The New Left may pander to conservatives by talking about how "unseemly" the President's language is... but guess what, a desire to shred the Bill of Rights is a whole lot more unseemly.
8) I'm voting for President of the United States, not president of the home owners' association. Choosing a president shouldn't be some sort of weird popularity contest where the least un-likable candidate wins by default. We're picking someone to do a job. We're looking for competence. We're looking for a workhorse, not a dinner party guest.
Oh yeah... I'm voting for Donald Trump because I HAVE been watching the news for the last few years. And guess what? I don't know him, I've never met him, I'm pretty sure I won't even get invited to an inauguration party... But I like him. I really like President Donald J. Trump. I think he's earned our votes and our support. I think he's on America's side. I think he realizes he should be on America's side.
So that is my spin.... And here is my question.... What are you voting for?