Support a Mass Walkout at the Republican Convention!
There are a lot of Republicans, mostly Christians, who find themselves unable to vote for the Republican frontrunner in November. Many of them will be at the Republican Convention in July. Many of them are made of stern stuff and are just as angry as any Trump supporter and more than a little desirous to see the GOP establishment brought down.
The GOP and Trump supporters have tried to laugh off the #NeverTrump movement, calling it inconsequential, feeble and failed. In an atmosphere where winning and being part of the victorious herd is more important than principle, these people believe that we'll knuckle under and go along again just one more time.
Pundits talk about what an historical thing it was for us to elect a black president and what it would be to elect a woman. Well, wouldn't it also be an historical thing for a party to lose a third of its members DURING the convention, because the party nominated an unacceptable candidate. It's not unprecidented. The Whig Party lost most of its members as it gradually lost its way philosophically.
For the past 40 years, the Republican Party has gradually lost its soul in its over-powering desire to win. Their history, however, has shown that, for the most part, the Republicans actually have a talent for losing. Starting with the disaster that was "They won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore," Richard Nixon, and the anemic Gerald Ford, the brightest spot over these four long decades was a man that the GOP leadership didn't actually want because he was too conservative and too much a Beltway outsider. George HW Bush was supposed to be next in line and after Reagan was gone, they dutifully put him up to have him knocked right back down when he did what all good Republican establishment folk do once elected - compromised his principles.
Then they gave us Bob Dole in 86, a man whose lackluster establishmentarianism failed to pick off an easy target in the smarmy Bill Clinton, even while Republican voters were busily restoring the Congress to Republican control. George W. Bush managed to engineer a win in 2000 and 2008, pushing aside the presumptive next-in-line, John McCain. Once again, the establishment put up its next in line with John McCain, throwing Sarah Palin in as a sop to the conservative wing who they were increasingly ignoring. After losing dismally to Barak Obama in 08, they ran Mitt Romney, another establishment candidate (his dad was former Republican presidential candidate George Romney). Mitt with a lot of help from the Republican establishment, managed to alienate the conservative wing of the party despite Mitt's being a decent guy and pretty talented businessman to boot. Conservatives sat on their hands in 2012 mostly because the GOP leadership told them they had to vote for Mitt because he was the lesser of two evils.
It's time to send a message to the GOP and it needs to be a very visible and embarrassing one. I think that, if Donald Trump is nominated by the Republican Party, all those who believe he is bad for the nation should stand up out of their seats, throw down their banners and placards and walk out of the building.
What a media moment that would be! So what if the Republicans lose? They've already told us they don't need us. We can vote for conservative candidates for Congress. We can put in principled people in national offices; people who won't be afraid to impeach one of their own.
Besides, it would make one of those great "historical" moments.
© 2016 by Tom King
1 comment:
I am forced to agree. Voting for either Hillary or Trump is an immoral act, and I will not participate. Both would mistake a vote--even if cast as a desperate vote against their opponent--as a mandate. Something I refuse to give them.
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