I didn't vote at the top of the ticket in 2016 for the first time since I turned 18. I didn't vote in the primary this year, also an adulthood first. Still not wildly inclined to vote for a serial adulterer who is almost certainly still pro-choice. But man I gotta vote this year.
Honesty compels me to note that I am fully aware that I'm disinclined to skip voting as it is, so only a marginal push was needed to get me off my "to Hell with all of them, I'm following the wife's lead" vow. But I just got a more-than-marginal push.
Historically, there is a single reason I vote Republican above all others, and it was just crammed in my face along with a note explaining that all the locks have been busted off.
Some folks are ok with weaponized smear campaigns as a means to reach a political end. That's horrifyingly consequentialist. I'm not a consequentialist, so even if I agreed with the outcome, the same impulses that drove me from Trump would drive me here.
I would have hoped for consistency of principle a few years ago, but I'm conservative by both politics and temperament, so I'm disinclined to think others could adopt radicalism with barely a nod to the past. This is where we are now, so time to adapt.
