I can’t associate with these Rs. Under Trump, they’ve abandoned most of what I agreed with as a conservative when it came to policy & worse have so embraced his odiousness in how they engage, there are few left I even respect. They want a shrinking circle & can have it. I’m out.
At first, I was set on writing in a name, b/c I am a conservative. I believe in a strong 2A, I’m pro-life, I support robust federalism & a limited fed. gov’t, and I’m worried about runaway spending that both parties have exacerbated. But this election isn’t about those things.
It’s about character and decency and respect for our institutions. It’s about getting back to a certain normalcy instead of constant chaos at the hands of a reality-TV president. It’s about honor and respecting the troops and respecting the dignity of all people.
And, despite this reality, despite the gravity of this election, President Trump and his lackeys have made absolutely ZERO effort to reach out to conservatives like me who care about these things. In fact, they all actively mocked us and pushed us away. That has consequences.
Moreover, Dems have actually listened to what conservatives like me have said. Sure, they haven’t changed their entire platform—and I still vehemently oppose a lot of it. But they held their base at bay & nominated one of the most moderate candidates in the field. That counts.
I’m a Christian, pro-life, pro-2A conservative that has never voted for a Democrat in my life and who disagrees with much of the Dem platform. But Trump and his ilk have actively degraded the GOP & pushed conservatives like me away—& I will now vote for Joe Biden as a result.
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Let’s walk through this blow by blow, since it appears to be the last-ditch argument the GOP wants to try to hang its hat on:
Why is the Hillary situation different from the Trump situation and why is it *not* a double standard to charge Trump and not Hillary? (1/)
Hillary’s case concerned use of a private email server for official govt biz during her time as Sec of State & the content of those emails.
So, Difference #1: Hillary didn’t willfully handpick the most sensitive NatSec items to shove in boxes & take home. It was all her emails.
Now, of those emails (~30,000), the FBI conducted a full investigation, and Hillary turned over every single one of those emails as soon as she was asked.
Difference #2: Hillary never obstructed justice or tried to conceal emails from authorities. Trump did so multiple times.
So, after yelling “RINO” at those of us who said Paxton should resign for this behavior years ago, and after re-electing Paxton with more than half of the primary vote… Texas Rs are now admit we were right.
More Republicans should ask what else we might be right about!
Oh, and it probably shouldn’t go unnoticed by @ColinAllredTX that @tedcruz just hired as his Chief of Staff Paxton’s longtime number two who was well-aware of all this conduct and said nothing and defended Paxton until as recently as last week.
What say you, Ted?
Paxton’s troubles could be Ted’s. It’s worth understanding why Ted thought Paxton’s number two was such a great fit as his chief of staff at such a prescient moment, just a week before all of this happened.
I’m sorry, but this guy just does not have presence. He doesn’t sound like a president at all. And that’s unfortunately a big part of the smell test. He is not the best chance to defeat Trump. Somebody else needs to emerge quickly, because this isn’t going to get it done.
My point has zero to do with RDS’s policies & everything to do with his skills as a candidate. To be a nat’l candidate, you have to pass believability tests from the stump & on TV. It’s why the highest RDS ever polled was at the very beginning before he started doing all of this.
RDS fans upset by this obvious fact seem to be under the impression that I’m against RDS beating Trump. So let me disabuse you of that: if RDS is second heading into my state’s primary, I will vote for him in a heartbeat. My point is he won’t be. He doesn’t have the juice.
If you’re not worried about the direction of our country and its severe lack of quality public leaders, you should be. It is seriously threatening the long-term strength of the United States. More good people need to step up and good people need to follow them.
It’s about competence and vision and courage. We’re basically stuck playing defense against ourselves, protecting the country against our own domestic strain of craziness. And as a result, we stand still so nothing breaks.
That may be okay for now, but it’s not going to cut it.
If you asked the average American on the street—R or D, doesn’t matter: “What is the United States trying to accomplish today? What are its primary objectives and goals?”
You would get blank stares. And that’s before even getting to the part of how we achieve them.
A big problem for the “Democrats are never prosecuted for this type of thing” argument is that Democrats are, in fact, also prosecuted for this type of thing. nytimes.com/2022/06/22/us/…
The boost in Trump’s polling in the wake of the indictment and his continued strength even after J6 makes clear that Republican voters get a completely separate diet of content even beyond Fox that actively attacks US institutions to prop up Donald Trump as a moral actor.
That’s why the traditional pillars of the GOP—Fox, the party, think tanks, even PACs like Club for Growth and others—are completely powerless to persuade the GOP base differently. Their message doesn’t even reach them. The base is captured completely by fringe media by design.
The only way to change this game is to create a NEW base from scratch—much like Trump did in 2016 to displace the waning Tea Party which Cruz and others were still chasing at the time.
What is that NEW base and who can create it? And is it even Republican?