The 2024 presidential election has been a long, strange journey for our country, and especially this lifelong Republican. The latest leg of the trip included a stop in Chicago and a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention.
It’s not a scenario I envisioned. It might have even surprised my former Democratic opponents who used to view me as a conservative boogeyman.
Credit: Geoff Duncan
Credit: Geoff Duncan
Unlike its current nominee, I have belonged to the GOP my entire adult life. Not only was former President Donald Trump a registered Democrat, but he also even stroked campaign donations to many of its leaders.
Many asked if my choice to support Vice President Kamala Harris for president was difficult. Let’s be clear: there’s not an ounce of regret in my decision. I care far more about the future of our country — the one that my kids and their kids will inherit — than I do the future of Donald Trump.
In recent years, my Republican Party has transformed from a political organization united around a core set of principles — limited government, individual responsibility and economic freedom — to a cult of personality that revolves around the ego of one man. Today’s GOP is an organization that no longer revolves around a commitment to policies but bends to every whim of a thin-skinned narcissist obsessed with his own power.
Some will say that there is not much by way of conservative principles for a guy like me in the Democratic Party, and that’s true. I frankly don’t agree with much of anything in the Democratic Party platform.
But I do know this: Elections are a binary choice. Like it or not, we have two major political parties, and you pick one or you pick the other. That principle rings even truer after the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was never really a plausible option, is reported to be dropping out soon and endorse Trump.
Harris is a serious human being with a sense of right and wrong. Yes, she is untested on the national stage, but voters are comparing her to Trump, not George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. She has far more of a chance of being a steady hand on the wheel than the other guy vying for the job. For four years, Trump governed our country with the same traits he’s lived his life for nearly eight decades: driven by chaos and craziness, not civility or conservatism.
Another common question in Chicago has revolved around my status as a Republican. I still belong to the party I’ve called home my entire life and have no interest in becoming a Democrat. I want to stay in the GOP; I am just not willing to give up my principles in the process.
To me, it’s simple: The only way to get the Republican train back on the tracks is by dumping Trump. Though party conventions are tailored to its card-carrying members, I know there are millions of good, loyal Republicans who are tired of making excuses for a felon like Trump everywhere they go.
A vote for Kamala Harris does not make you a Democrat; it makes you a patriot.
It’s also a chance to hit the reset button and commence the healing and rebuilding we so desperately need. Begin the corporate restructuring and moving on from the man who cost Republicans control of the U.S. House in the 2018 midterms, the White House in 2020 and control of the U.S. Senate in 2021. The current model is not working and won’t without a change at the top.
By 2028, it is my sincere hope to be back at the Republican National Convention in a party seeking to grow its numbers with a welcoming message, not shrink them by a loyalty test reminiscent of a third-world country. Time will tell how that process unfolds.
During the aftermath of the 2020 election when Trump and his ilk were whipping his supporters into a frenzy over false claims about stolen elections, my family’s safety required armed guards. One day, my son handed me a coaster inscribed with a lesson I had imparted on him some years earlier: “Doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing.”
It’s a simple yet powerful saying, and one I hope all voters keep in their minds as they cast their ballots in November.
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