Monday night’s debate sealed my fate. I’m leaving the Republican Party. I was only a member for a little under a year, but I’ve grown up living under conservative ideals and forming my beliefs after the likes of great leaders such as Ronald Reagan, Sandra Day O’Connor and Abraham Lincoln. I have been born and raised to be a Republican, in a family that is very prominent in local Republican politics in my hometown.
I loved my party and I still love its history. We were the party that freed the slaves. Fifty years ago, we were the party of inclusion. Today, we’re the party of racism, gun fetishes and misconstrued Christian ideals.
Some of the speeches at the GOP Convention in Cleveland and their utter disrespect for human decency, known to many conservatives as “political correctness,” flabbergasted me. Compared to the hope and positive future alluded to by the Democratic National Convention, the GOP Convention felt like a gathering of town criers proclaiming that the end of civilization is nigh.
The shining moment of crowning Donald Trump and Mike Pence as the heirs to the party’s throne represented the death of the ideals that Abraham Lincoln first represented in the wake of the Whig Party’s decay in a critical point of American history. Weeks later, Trump’s feud with the Khan family garnered national attention, putting the self-proclaimed “lover of the veterans” on a disgusting podium of racism that exceeded most things that he had done in his campaign. Weeks after that, he openly endorsed the idea of assassinating Hillary Clinton. At the first debate, the Republican nominee defied historic conservative business ideals and pushed his wishes for government interference to keep American businesses from going overseas.
I no longer can withstand the rhetoric and the association. Either Donald Trump isn’t a Republican, or I’m not. I accept the latter.
My ideology hasn’t changed. I still favor a smaller central government, free markets and a strong national defense. While the new ReTrumplican Party might claim to represent those ideals, there is zero foundation behind those claims. Donald Trump can’t claim to favor smaller government and at the same time seek to make libel laws stronger for journalists that call out his inadequacies.
Donald Trump can’t claim to prefer free markets and simultaneously criticize international free-trade deals as part of his platform. It is utter hypocrisy, reminiscent of the very political class that Trump adamantly reassures the world that he isn’t a part of.
What I’ve come to realize, however, is that Donald Trump isn’t necessarily the problem with the Republican Party, but rather he has exposed the problems that exist within the GOP and brought them to the forefront.
The Republican voter block feels like the government and the country no longer represent them. To clarify, a majority of white men feel like the government and country no longer represent them. A country that was founded by white men, has been run by white men for 200 years and will continue to be dominated by white men for the considerable future doesn’t represent the white men in the country. That makes sense.
The biggest problem with the GOP, however, is that it blindly accepts the prejudices that fuel its ideals. Racism, sexism and lack of acceptance of anything remotely different from the views of 30 years ago are what drive a majority of Republicans today. Donald Trump has become the figure that has brought this out on a public pedestal. It took Trump for me to realize this.
I’m not going to become a Democrat; my ideals aren’t left enough for that. While there are some appealing Democratic planks, holistically I’m a conservative who feels abandoned by his own political party.
Coincidentally, I am okay with the abandonment. I’m walking away from my party with my head held high, knowing that there is no personal guilt involved with being associated with the xenophobia that is fueling the election in November. I urge all conservatives to examine your own convictions in the same way that I have, and ask yourself if you can morally accept siding with a party that is now associated for the foreseeable future with the rhetoric of Donald Trump.
Good riddance, Grand Old Party. May your defeat in November be marked as the day that conservatism in the United States became a martyr for ineffective blind populism.