As readers of my Facebook page know, I’ve struggled to decide which candidate would get my vote for President. I don’t like the three candidates officially on Georgia’s ballot and could easily talk myself into voting against all of them.
Elections are about the choices we have, not the choices we want. The prospect of a Hillary Clinton Presidency scares me. In my mind, she’s a mixture of corruption, incompetence, and far left politics. Blocking her from occupying the Oval Off⋯⋯ice was a major consideration in casting my vote. The prospect of a Donald Trump scares me too because he’s a mixture of arrogance, incompetence, and he has an intense desire to be liked which has corrupted many good people in DC. Gary Johnson proved himself to not be a serious candidate so he was off the table pretty early on. I gave serious consideration to writing in Evan McMullin. I heard him speak on several podcasts and liked what I heard. But he has little chance to win here in Georgia.
I recall Neal Boortz saying he generally voted for Libertarian candidates in Georgia unless the race between the Republican and Democrat was close - in which case he would vote for the Republican. I decided to modify that and apply it to this race. If the race was close in Georgia at the time I voted, I would vote for Trump. If the race in Georgia wasn’t close, I would vote for McMullin.
My family decided to vote early, in Tuesday October 25th. I looked at the RCP average of polls in Georgia and saw it showed Trump with a 4 point lead - inside the margin of error for most polls. Consequently, I cast my very reluctant vote for Donald Trump.
No matter what happens tomorrow, the Republican Party and conservative movement is in crisis. I’ll have plenty to say about that in the coming days and months. However, you won’t hear me attack others who arrive at different conclusions in the Presidential race than I did. I’ve heard Sean Hannity and others, including some employed by Trump, say they will attempt to destroy all those who oppose Trump. Some #NeverTrump folks say they will never forgive those who foisted Trump on the GOP. None of this will advance the conservative movement and I won’t be a part of driving people our of the GOP, with one notable exception: The so-called "alt-right" and their sympathizers need to go. They seek only to destroy and every sober minded conservative should oppose them and their ilk and reject their thinking.
What I will be working toward is seeing the GOP actually become the conservative Party. In my mind, that begins with truly understanding what a conservative is. A lot of what masquerades as conservative these days isn’t in fact conservative.
I leave you with this challenge: If you consider yourself a conservative, spend time studying what conservatism actually is. Read books by the icons of the conservative movement. I’ve been doing that, and in my quest, I've gone all the way back to Edmund Burke to make sure I’m headed in the right direction.
What our country needs most is two things in my mind: 1) A return to faith in God, and 2) Conservative principles applied to modern problems. If we do those things, we can get our country on the right track.